In the Era of Film
by TashaLaw
Summary: Life isn't a movie. But then, sometimes it doesn't have to be. Luke and Lorelai slowly find their way back to each other.
1. The Story of Us

**In the Era of Film**

**Summary**: Life isn't a movie. But then, sometimes it doesn't have to be. Luke and Lorelai slowly find their way back to each other.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own _Gilmore Girls_, so don't sue me. If you want the big bucks, go after the Kenneth Lay estate.

**Rating**: T, just to be safe

**Author's Notes**: I started this story after _That's What You Get Folks, For Making Whoopi_, and it may incorporate some elements from the later episodes as they air (like L/C dating), but it's supposed to deviate. Basically this is my wishful-thinking, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel way of resolving season 7. No spoilers, but fair warning: I'm going to try and limit Christopher appearances as much as possible, but there will be a goodly amount of April. And L/L interaction to come.

* * *

**Chapter 1: The Story of Us**

Luke had never been a movie guy.

To him, they had always been just a lot of made-up stories with two-dimensional characters played by over-paid actors doing things on screen that were not even remotely plausible in real life. Dinosaurs cloned and brought to life just to chase people around remote islands. Killer aliens taking over the world. War movies with all kinds of people dying and being ripped to shreds, and yet the main character always manages to dodge the bullets and goes home with only a few scrapes.

No, Luke had never been a movie guy, but he had been willing to change that for Lorelai. In hindsight it seemed kind of silly, really. He didn't know Kevin Costner from Kevin Kline or Jennifer Aniston from Jennifer Lopez. He laughed during the sad movies, thought the comedies were idiotic, and the romance movies... those were the worst.

"People don't just meet and suddenly fall in love!" he had once ranted to Lorelai after sitting through one such 'chick flick' with her. The movie was called Fate or Kismet or something like that. "They don't just see each other, spend a few hours together, decide 'she's the one,' and then wait for each other forever. That's just not realistic."

"Says the guy with a horoscope in his wallet," she had retorted, grinning in delight. But Luke just rolled his eyes.

"That's different."

"How so?"

He had never been able to come up with an answer to that question that satisfied Lorelai. But no matter how many Meg Ryan or John Cusack movies she made him sit through, he had never changed his mind. Love was not that easy, not that cut-and-dry. In the real world, sometimes people simply were not right for each other, no matter how much they wanted to be.

Or so Luke told himself after they broke up. Broke up. The words hardly seemed real to him, and yet they were so inadequate. Broke up. Like they were some small, fragile thing that could not stand up to the wear and tear of daily life. Luke snorted to himself at the thought. No, he and Lorelai had not broken up. They had crashed and burned, exploded, self-destructed. Like Kirk driving Taylor's car into the side of his diner, taking out everything in its path. The wall, the tables, the irreplaceable items he had gotten from his father's store. All of it was gone in a second, one violent instant when someone stopped paying attention and failed to be careful with their actions.

Maybe they were never meant to be after all. Life was not a movie, and no matter how hard he tried, Luke would never be a movie guy. Maybe he could never be the man Lorelai wanted, needed in her life. Maybe there was no such thing as 'meant to be' at all. The whole concept was a made up fantasy to appease the unhappy, lonely people of the world.

Luke only wished that the aching pain in his gut felt a little less real as well.

* * *

Life went on. As the weeks passed they saw each other on the street, at Doose's, and occasionally at town meetings. They exchanged polite but guarded hello's or simply nodded acknowledgments. But Lorelai never came to the diner for coffee, and for that Luke was secretly grateful. No matter how numb he felt to the end of their relationship, he doubted that they could never go back to just being friends. 

He realized that he was over her when he found out she had officially gotten together with Christopher. It surprised him really, that all the rage and hurt was gone, leaving only a void where he knew his heart had been. On some level he should have felt betrayed that she had gone back to him, to the man who had hurt her and left her time after time. Bitterly, he even supposed that Lorelai was meant to be with Christopher, that he could make her happy. In the end, that was what he wanted – for her to be happy.

And then he would remind himself that he was fine, that he felt okay about the whole situation. No reason to feel sad or angry when the person that he had lost was never meant to be his in the first place.

In the mean time, Luke distracted himself with work and with April. He ate dinner at Liz and TJ's house at least twice a week, and when he was not at the diner he could sometimes be found at Sniffy's Tavern. While there was an initial outcry when the rumor mill finally got wind of the break-up, the townspeople quickly learned to leave him alone. And within weeks it seemed as though everything had gotten back to normal.

Well, pre-Lorelai normal.

"You miss her, don't you?" April asked him one day as she sat at the counter doing her homework. She had been surprised to learn about the break-up but asked few questions about it, obviously realizing it was a subject Luke wanted to avoid.

"Sometimes," he admitted.

"Are you two still friends?" Luke shrugged in uncertainty, and she added, "It would be cool if you could stay friends. That way maybe we could all hang out again sometime, like on my birthday."

He merely said in reply, "I don't know if that's going to work..."

This time, April shrugged indifferently, switching topics to something science-related she had learned at school. Their conversation – or rather her fast-paced ramblings – steered from school to the diner to the town, as they so often did. Luke marveled at the depth of her observations and her ability to articulate what she saw in the world around her. For such a young person, she seemed wise beyond her years.

"So when do I get to meet my aunt?" she him asked.

"What?" he said in confusion, caught off guard.

"Your sister, Liz. When do I get to meet her?"

"Um..." He had not thought to introduce them, what with Liz dealing with the pregnancy and TJ, plus his recent break-up with Lorelai. "Whenever you want," he said finally.

"You said you have dinner with them every week. How about this week? I could go to dinner with you," she suggested.

"Yeah, okay," he agreed. "How about tomorrow? I'm sure Liz would love to see you."

As it turned out, Liz was thrilled with the idea when Luke phoned her from the diner to confirm. She immediately started peppering him with questions about April's favorite foods and the things she disliked. Hoping to head off another disastrous cooking venture, Luke talked her into letting him cook for the four of them, although he gave her the responsibility of making some kind of suitable dessert, suggesting jello as a suitable venture for her culinary talents.

As he hung up, Luke could not help but feel hopeful with this new turn of events. Lorelai may not have been in his life any longer, but he still had a family. He still had friends and his business. Life went on.

* * *

Later that night, Luke received a phone call from Anna. 

"April tells me she's having dinner with your sister on Thursday," she said tersely by way of greeting.

"Anna, hey... Yeah, she said she wanted to meet Liz, so I invited her to dinner. April said tomorrow was good for her schedule, so-"

"Well, you should have checked with me first." While her voice was carefully controlled, she sounded angry.

"Sorry," Luke said after a few seconds. "It sort of slipped my mind. We make plans during the week all the time, so I didn't think it would be a big deal."

"Not a big deal?" she parroted back at him. "The diner is one thing, but taking my kid to see strange people is quite another."

"Liz is my sister. She's April's _aunt_," he stressed. "I don't understand what you're so upset about."

Taking a deep breath, Anna adopted the tone of feigned reasonableness she so often used with him. "Luke, from everything you've told me about your sister, she sounds nice, but... a little unstable. I'm just not sure it's a good idea to expose a thirteen-year-old girl to that so soon, even if she is family."

"First you don't want her spending time with my fiance, and now she can't see my sister? She's my daughter too!" Luke exclaimed in disbelief.

"Well, just look how well that situation turned out," Anna said.

"What situation?"

"You and that fiance who isn't your fiance anymore. April said you to broke up."

He sighed at the reminder. "Yeah, we broke up."

"I'm sorry, Luke. I really am. But look at it from my perspective. What if April had gotten attached to her before you two split up? Then she'd be really upset right now about losing someone she was close to."

The anger and annoyance Luke had been feeling with regard to Anna shifted entirely into sadness at her words. They cut deep, serving both as a remembrance of what he had lost and a reprimand for having contributed to its absense.

"I think if they had gotten close, none of this would have ever happened," he said softly, more to himself than to her.

"What, you're blaming me now for your break-up?" Anna demanded angrily. "That's real mature, Luke, dumping your problems on someone else."

"Well your whole speech about treating April like a sweater didn't help any!" he said bitterly. "And saying whatever you did to Lorelai about how she wouldn't be accepted until we got married."

"I'm just protecting my daughter-"

"She's my daughter, too!" Luke shouted into the phone. "She's my daughter too, and I'm sick of being treated like some bumbling idiot who has no idea how to be a father because you never gave me the chance!"

"Luke-"

"Ever since she has come into my life, I have put April first. I put her before my wedding, before my relationship with Lorelai, before everything that means anything to me. So I may not be the perfect father, but I'm trying. And April's trying. And..." He trailed off, floundering for the ultimate point he was trying to make. "And I'm taking her to have dinner with my sister tomorrow!" he concluded, slamming the phone down.

* * *

"Mom's mad," April told him the next evening as she came into the diner. Usually when Anna would bring her over, she would come in as well, but this time she had simply dropped her daughter off outside and left. 

Luke nodded. "Yeah, I know."

"She's a little over-protective sometimes," she said knowingly.

Her comment forced Luke to give classic parental response. "She just wants what's best for you."

April just shrugged in response.

When they arrived for dinner, Liz very nearly squealed in excitement at meeting April and immediately enveloped the girl in a hug. "You're so big!" she exclaimed. "I can't believe how big you are. Isn't she big, TJ?"

"Yeah, she's huge," he agreed unenthusiastically.

"Liz..." Luke began warningly, not wanting April to be smothered, but his sister waived him off.

"Go make dinner, Luke. My niece and I are going to catch up. My _niece_. Oh, that's so much fun to say!"

While Luke began cooking (thankfully having overseen the repair of their oven several weeks before), Liz pulled April over to the couch and bombarded her with a long series of questions and compliments. For her part, April suffered the attention well and showed herself to be a diverse conversationalist as she described her interests and educational ambitions to an aunt and uncle she had never met before. Liz was suitably impressed, but TJ was quickly annoyed by April's obvious intelligence. However, she managed to win him over by commenting on the historic accuracy of the renaissance costumes and other items he had hung around the house.

Before TJ could dominate the conversation with his prowess as a craftsman, Liz remarked on how much April resembled her and Luke's mother. Or course, this thought led her to get out the photo albums to demonstrate the point, and just the mention of pouring over old pictures sent TJ into the kitchen to 'help' Luke.

"Is that your dad?" April asked, pointing to a photo of an older man with a young boy standing in front of the diner (then hardware store).

"Hey, look at that!" Liz said brightly. "I forgot I had that picture."

Overhearing, Luke asked, "What picture?"

"The one of you and dad in front of the store. The one with your favorite shirt."

"Oh, that one," he said, his voice dropping as he returned to the stove.

"Luke hates this picture," she told April quietly.

"Why?"

"It was taken the year our mom died, and Luke was pretty upset. He wore the same shirt every day for the whole year."

"I did not," Luke called from the kitchen. Then, addressing TJ, who was trying to taste something cooking on the stove, he yelled, "Get out of here! You're gonna burn yourself and then we'll have to go to the hospital!"

Liz continued on, ignoring the commotion behind her. "Dad made him wash it every night, and eventually the thing just fell apart. But this is him wearing it in the picture."

"It's plaid," April commented in amusement, to which Liz simply rolled her eyes.

"Our mom made it for him. She was really good at sewing and cooking, and all that domestic stuff I can't do. But Luke's good at it," she added, glancing back at her brother in the kitchen as he proceeded to threaten TJ further with bodily harm. Then she whispered softly to April so he could not overhear, "That shirt was the last thing she made him before he died. He was so upset when he had to throw it away."

She simply nodded, glad for information about grandparents she would never get the chance to meet. "Is that her?" she asked, pointing at another picture.

Liz smiled brightly. "Yep, that's her. I think you look like her a little."

April did not see her resemblance to the fair-haired woman in the picture, but she nodded in agreement anyway. "And who's this?" she inquired of the man standing next to her grandmother.

"Oh, that's Uncle Lewie, Dad's brother. He died a few years ago..." She trailed off as tears sprang to her eyes and she instantly began sobbing. This action had the unintended consequence of immediately scaring April.

"Are you okay?" she asked. Reaching over to the coffee table, she grabbed a tissue and held it out to Liz. Then, looking between her aunt and the photo in the book, she speculated, "You and your uncle must have been very close."

This comment made Liz cry harder, and April seemed disturbed that neither Luke nor TJ noticed her distress as they bickered in the kitchen. But after a few moments, the pregnant woman managed to compose herself enough to say, "No, Lewie was a jerk. I was just thinking about you, and how you'll never get to meet him and see for yourself what a jerk he was. Or meet our parents. That's so sad. They would have loved you."

Sensing her hysterics had more to do with her pregnancy than anything else, April tried to quickly steer the conversation away from dead relatives as they moved further into the photo album. Liz gushed over baby pictures of Jess, plus a few random snap-shots taken of Luke over the years. But there was a sizable gap between those and her wedding pictures, which were the next to appear in the album. "I was never very good at taking pictures. Or getting them developed," she explained. "But here's me and TJ at our wedding. We had it in town, right in front of the gazebo."

"Cool renaissance theme," April remarked.

"Yeah, that way all our friends could be there and participate. Besides, we already had most of the clothes and stuff. Doesn't TJ look handsome?"

She nodded in agreement, although she thought the tights were a bit over-the-top for a grown man. "I don't know much about the renaissance," she said. "I once read a book about it, but that was a long time ago and I'm not sure about how accurate they were with the details."

"We'll have to take you to the fair when the season starts up again," Liz decided. "You'll love it. They have shows and demonstrations, and I'm sure someone has a book lying around somewhere."

"I'm not telling you again, TJ!" they heard Luke shout. "Get out of the kitchen, or so help me...!"

"Hey, it's my kitchen!" the other man responded.

Luke growled in frustration, and Liz quickly intervened. "TJ, come here," she called. "I'm showing April pictures from our wedding."

"Oh, did you show her the one of me in the air-pants?" he asked, but they both ignored him.

"This is a good picture," April said, seeing one of her father in a suit standing by his sister. It struck her suddenly that she always saw Luke in his usual diner ensemble: jeans, plaid flannel shirt, and blue baseball cap. Well, since the break-up he had been wearing a black baseball cap, as though he were in mourning over his split with Lorelai.

"Oh, here's my favorite picture of him," Liz said, turning the page. She pointed to a photo of Luke from the wedding, a candid shot of him dancing with a dark-haired woman April immediately recognized as his ex-fiance. The angle of the picture caught Luke's profile, but his smile was natural and his enjoyment of the moment obvious. In fact, she felt certain that she had never seen him quite so relaxed and at ease.

"He looks happy," April said with a sad smile. She had not seen Luke smile much since his break-up with Lorelai, and certainly not in so open and unforced a manner.

"Yeah, he does," Liz agreed.

"Of course he does," TJ contributed, perhaps a little too loudly. "Lorelai was hot."

"What are you talking about?" Luke called, overhearing the familiar name but not the context in which it was used. He set the pots on the stove to simmer and walked into the living room.

Liz flashed him a smile. "I was just showing April some family pictures," she said, gesturing to the album.

"Ah," he acknowledged, his face falling as he laid eyes on the picture they had been looking at. He used to have a copy of that same picture in a frame at his apartment, but it had since been relegated it to storage along with everything else that reminded him of her.

"Which reminds me, we need some pictures of April!" Liz suggested excitedly.

"Why?" TJ asked in confusion. "We only just met her."

"She's Luke's daughter," she said, drawing out the last word with all due impatience. "And I need pictures."

Liz used a disposable camera as the batteries in her digital camera had long since died and she still had yet to buy new ones. She took several shots of Luke perched awkwardly on the couch next to his daughter before taking some of just her. The camera was handed around as each of them took a turn in a picture with April, who smiled good-naturedly through the impromptu-photo shoot. But then she insisted on taking pictures of Liz and Luke, Liz and TJ, and even one of Luke and TJ. Thankfully, the camera ran out of exposures just as Luke's dinner was ready to serve, and they all sat down to eat.

Several years passed before Liz remembered to get the pictures on the disposable camera developed.

TBC


	2. The Way We Were

A/N: Thanks for all the great reviews! And sorry for any confusion - there's no jump in time from the last part to this one.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 2: The Way We Were**

Later that evening, as Luke drove her home, April talked animatedly about the evening and how much she liked both Liz and TJ. She was excited about the prospect of going to the renaissance fair at some point in the fall and even mentioned having dinner with them again.

"I just have one question," she declared in a serious tone.

"Yeah?"

"What's with TJ and tights? That's an unnatural obsession he has."

"That's just TJ," Luke assured her. "But it is weird, isn't it?"

"Yep."

They drove in silence for a few moments longer before April spoke again.

"So have you seen Lorelai lately?" she asked, forcing her voice to sound casual.

In answering, Luke likewise kept his cool and detached. "Nope."

"How long were you two together?"

"Um... about two years I guess. But we were only engaged for one."

April nodded as she took in this information. While she brought up the subject of Lorelai occasionally, she had never delved too deeply into the reasons for their break-up, mostly because she suspected it had a lot to do with her arrival in Luke's life. But April could tell he was not over her yet. Anytime her name was mentioned, it caught his attention, no matter what he was doing. As well, sometimes he would be in the middle of a task, such as making coffee or wiping down the counter at the diner, and his eyes would glaze over as though his thoughts were miles away. With Lorelai.

"And how long did you two know each other before that?" Thanks to Miss Patty's wealth of Stars Hollow gossip, she knew that her father and Lorelai had been friends before they began dating. Unfortunately, that source of information tended to dry up whenever Luke was around to overhear, so she had only learned bits and pieces of their history.

"I don't remember," Luke lied. "A long time." The subject was clearly beginning to effect him as he shifted uncomfortably on his side of the truck.

"Well, how old was Rory when you first met her?" April pursued.

Luke sighed. "I don't know. About your age I guess."

"And she's almost done with college..." She quickly did the calculations in her head before pronouncing, "So almost nine years."

"Ten," he corrected automatically before remembering that he had no desire to discuss the subject.

"That's a long time," April said appreciatively.

Luke merely shrugged in response, trying to recapture his appearance of indifference.

She let a few moments pass before venturing another probing question. "Were you two happy together?"

But she realized that she had misjudged the conversation when he said tersely, "I don't want to talk about Lorelai any more. We broke up. It's over. That's it."

April could hear the pain in her father's voice, the struggle to control the emotions which were obviously still fresh. She studied him curiously, as though he were a subject of some psychological experiment. She had never been as interested in social-based sciences as she was in the physical, 'hard' disciplines, but she found his reactions to be absolutely fascinating. And it helped that her motive was based mostly in a desire to see him as happy as he appeared in that picture from Liz's wedding.

So with the idea of per own personal social experiment beginning to form in her mind, April gazed out the window and left Luke to his thoughts.

* * *

April's words stayed with Luke long after he dropped her off at her home that night. Recollections of the past ten years swirled through his mind like a tornado, bringing him images and flashes of memory as though they were bits of paper torn from the book of his life. He found himself reliving the night from Liz's wedding album photo: his first dance with Lorelai. In hindsight, he recognized it for what it was – the definitive beginning of their relationship. He asked her to dance, and in taking her hand, led them both into the uncharted waters of something wonderful. And dangerous. 

Rolling his eyes, Luke mentally chastised himself for waxing poetic about a woman who had slept with another man mere hours after a fight which reasonable people would have trouble concluding was actually a break-up. As much as he tried to maintain his indifference, sometimes he found it easier to just stew in his own anger and bitterness than to confront what really bothered him: his own contributions to their break-up. But no matter how much he thought about it, the only thing that brought him any sleep at night was the conclusion that he had not truly lost Lorelai. He had simply never had her to begin with.

Suddenly, as though conjured from his thoughts, Lorelai appeared on the side of the road up ahead.

Luke blinked several times just to make sure, but as he got closer he was able to confirm the make and color of the car, as well as the tell-tale figure of the woman he was intimately familiar with. Automatically, he slowed the truck and pulled up behind her jeep, leaving the headlights on for illumination. She seemed immediately on guard, instinctively backing towards the front of her car before she paused, squinting in recognition. He resolutely ignored the look of relief that crossed her face as he got out of the truck.

"Need some help?" he called out.

"Yeah, that would be great," she said, giving him a nervous smile. "I tried to call the auto club, but my cell's dead. I would have charged it, but I think the battery's dead. Plus Rory borrowed my car charger. I know I should really get another charger for myself, for emergencies like this, but it's never become an issue until now and-" Realizing that she had begun to ramble, Lorelai stopped herself abruptly.

Luke was careful to give her several feet of clearance as he made his way around her to the front of the jeep. "Pop the hood," he instructed simply. She quickly complied, and he began inspecting the engine as best he could in the near darkness. "What happened?" he asked her after a moment.

"I was driving, and it just... stopped," she said.

"Did you run out of gas?"

Lorelai gave him an annoyed look at the patronizing question. "Only if my gas gage is broken and my car suddenly started getting three miles to the gallon." He lifted one eyebrow as if in warning, and she added more contritely, "I just filled it up about an hour ago."

"And the battery's dead?" he asked, turning his attention back to the engine.

"Yeah, I think so. Everything turned off, but not right away. I was driving and for no reason the car just stopped moving, so I pulled over to the side. Then about fifteen minutes later the lights and radio went off."

"Sounds like the battery, but I doubt that would have caused it to stop like that..." He trailed off as he looked into the engine. "I think I found the problem," he deduced.

"What?" Lorelai cautiously came up next to him, taking care to keep an appropriate distance.

"Timing belt's broken. And without the charge from the car, your battery probably died. Which doesn't surprise me considering how much abuse it suffers," he muttered the last part mostly to himself.

"So, can you fix it?"

Shutting the car hood, Luke simply shook his head. "Gypsy can take care of it tomorrow," he said.

"Oh."

Without further comment, he headed back towards his truck, not stopping until he reached the door. As he reached for the handle, he glanced back and noted Lorelai still standing uncertainly by the jeep. "You coming or not?" he demanded.

At his words, her face transformed into a picture of gratitude. She quickly reached into the car for her purse before hurrying to the passenger side of his truck. "Thank you," she said, feeling awkward as she buckled the seatbelt.

But Luke's tone was gruff as he responded, "You really thought I'd just leave you out here?"

"No. I didn't." Her voice was gentle, her words an apology and thanks rolled into one. They both knew Luke would never have left her on the side of the road, no matter how angry or hurt he felt. It simply was not in his nature.

"So what are you doing out here?" he asked after they had been driving for several minutes.

"I, uh... I was on my way back from Boston," Lorelai said quietly.

Luke nodded, having already deduced as much. She was on the opposite side of town from the most direct route from Hartford.

"What about you?" she inquired.

"I was dropping April off at her mom's house," he said without taking his eyes from the road. "I took her to have dinner with Liz and TJ tonight. They hadn't met yet and I thought they should."

"That's great," Lorelai said, forcing away the disappointment and jealousy that threatened to overwhelm her. "I bet Liz was excited."

"She took about fifty million pictures," he confirmed, causing her to let out a shy chuckle. "Not that they'll ever get developed."

"I bet she did." She took a deep breath before doing her part in keeping the conversation light and friendly. "So everything's going good with April?"

"Everything's fine," Luke said succinctly.

"Good. That's... good. I'm glad." Realizing how close they were coming to the topic they both wished to avoid - their failed relationship- Lorelai let her normally talkative nature take a back seat and she fell silent.

Luke found the quiet atmosphere between them eerie. They had very rarely just sat together without speaking, whether in the car or even at home in front of the television. Lorelai always had some comment or joke to tell. Sometimes she would ask him a question just to hear his voice, but usually she was content with letting him listen to her.

Not that he ever minded it. Sometimes he thought that talking was her favorite past time, although eating and watching TV both came a close second. And more amorous pursuits probably trumped all of those, but talking... It was like breathing to Lorelai. Luke supposed her communicative nature came from so many years of living with the taciturn Gilmores.

Knowing that they still had at least fifteen minutes before reaching her house, Luke found himself searching for a topic that would take them out of the awkward silence. "She asked about you," he said finally.

The abrupt statement startled Lorelai. "Who...? Oh, April. April asked about me?"

"Yeah."

"That's sweet."

"She's a good kid."

"She must get that from you," she said lightly.

Luke smiled at her compliment but said nothing in response. And for a moment, it almost felt like the way it used to be between them. Luke driving his old green truck with her in the passenger seat while they discussed the little things going on in their lives. Nothing spectacular or romantic, but Lorelai felt comfortable and safe in a way she had never experienced with Christopher. Luke just understood her and _knew _her so well, she never felt the need to pretend or distract him from her real self. Even sitting next to him then, with the wreck of their relationship separating them more than those few feet, she still felt their connection.

"So, I hear you're dating Christopher now," he said casually, breaking her mood like a hammer shattering glass. He sounded more neutral than angry, but Lorelai could see the tenseness in his jaw line.

"Um... yeah," she acknowledged, fighting back the accompanying wave of guilt. His question reminded her of the time he forced her to admit she was learning to fish for a date with a guy. She did not want him to know about Christopher, did not want to see the recrimination in his eyes. She was certain that if she did, it would ruin what little pleasure she was squeezing from that relationship.

Luke was cool and collected as he followed up with, "So how's that going?"

"Fine. It's fine," Lorelai said shortly, wishing he would drive faster so she could avoid this topic. She was beginning to rethink the whole zen, 'comfortable with Luke' theory she had been entertaining earlier.

"That's good," he said, nodding thoughtfully as though he meant it. Lorelai waited for the rejoinder, the follow-up comment designed to let her know how terrible she was for dating Christopher so soon, for sleeping with him.

But it never came.

Instead, Luke pulled the truck into her driveway and turned off the engine. They both got out of the truck, and he fell into step beside her as she approached her front door. The moment was surreal, a distortion of a ritual they had so often enacted before. Except this time Luke had not opened the car door for her or found a reason to touch her as they walked to the house. She did not pause at the top step to give him a good-night kiss or an invitation to stay the night.

She simply said, "Thanks for the ride."

He nodded and shrugged one shoulder slightly, as if to say, "No problem." But he said nothing, merely stood there by the door as she fished in her purse for her keys. Once she located them and unlocked the door, she noticed that he had still made no move to leave. She sensed he was waiting for something. Or perhaps waiting to say something. Her heart jumped hopefully in her chest even as a sense of dread sent chills up her spine and down her arms.

"Do you want to come in...?" she began, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the kitchen. But he spoke before she could offer him something to drink.

"No, no, that's okay. I need to get home. Early deliveries tomorrow." He stuffed his hands in his pockets, as though to distract them both from the lie he had just told. He never had early deliveries on Friday mornings.

But he still did not retreat from his spot on the porch, and Lorelai felt a little confused. Should she go inside and simply leave him there? What was he waiting for? Was he planning to say something? Did he want her to say something? _Maybe he wants a tip for the ride home_, a sarcastic voice in her head suggested.

"Okay, well... thanks again," she offered, opening the door and hoping he would take the hint.

Before she could step through and shut the door behind her, he cleared his voice, forcing her to pause and look back at him expectantly.

"You can still... come to the diner, you know. For coffee or food or whatever," Luke said, his eyes focusing on the frosted glass of the door rather than her face. But she could tell he was trying – he was trying very hard to be okay with her, with them.

In that moment, it occurred to Lorelai that perhaps they simply made better friends than lovers. And maybe he felt the same way. Maybe he did not want to lose her friendship any more than she wanted to lose his, no matter how painful or awkward it felt to be in each other's presence. Or maybe the offer was just to prove her he was over her, that he could see her on a daily basis without it being a big deal to him.

"Are you sure?" she asked finally.

"Yeah," Luke answered with more confidence than before. She wondered if it was a challenge of some sort – to see who could demonstrate themselves more unaffected by the break-up. But her lack of response caused his face to fall slightly, and she knew the invitation was more than false bravado as he began to say, "Not that you have to if you don't want-"

"Sure," she interrupted quickly. "That sounds nice. As long as you're sure it won't be... weird or anything."

Luke shook his head. "Not weird to me."

"Okay." She smiled, resisting the sudden urge to grin in anticipation. "Then I guess I'll see you at the diner. Sometime."

Luke smiled back, just a little lift of the corners of his mouth, but she saw her own feelings mirrored in his guarded expression. Tentative, fragile hope.

"Okay then," he said. "I'll see you."

This time, he turned and walked back towards his truck, and Lorelai watched him go. No matter how hard she tried, she could not ignore the fact that she had found greater enjoyment in the last fifteen minutes of Luke's company than she had in the past months of dating Christopher.


	3. Casablanca

**Chapter 3: Casablanca**

It took her three days to work up the nerve to go into the diner. Three days of wondering if he really meant the invitation. Three days of parsing his words and analyzing their meaning. Three days of craving his coffee and wanting to just see him again, to hear his voice and be near him.

Lorelai finally gave into temptation and made a trip into town before going to work at the inn, timing her visit to coincide with the morning breakfast rush. She received a number of horrified looks as she approached the counter, and if the disturbing hush that fell over the diner crowd had not alerted Luke to her presence, the not-so-quiet whispers that followed in her wake would have. It felt a little as though time were standing still. She could almost hear Humphrey Bogart's voice in her head saying, "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world..."

But as he turned to take her order, Luke merely glanced up from his note pad briefly before asking, "What'll it be?"

"Just coffee," she said. "To go."

He nodded, moving to fill a paper cup with the hot black liquid. As he did so, she noticed for the first time that he no longer wore the plain blue hat she had given him so many years before. The night before he had been dressed nicely so it's absence had not been conspicuous. But now seeing him in his usual 'diner uniform,' she noted that he had replaced it with a black baseball cap with some sort of sporting insignia. It looked strange and wrong, and she found herself wishing that he could at least go back to one he had worn before the blue hat. Something familiar and broken-in rather than new and unfamiliar.

"Anything else?" Luke asked, setting the cup of coffee on the counter.

She shook her head, laying some money down before reaching for the cup. But before she could turn and make her way safely out onto the street again, she found herself saying, "Nice hat."

She saw his eyes flicker uncertainly, as though she had caught him doing something wrong. But just as quickly, the look was gone, and in it's place was measured resolve. "Yeah, well, I needed a new one. The old one was a little worn out, so..."

Lorelai forced herself to smile, to let him have the lie.

"It looks good," she said, hoping he would ignore the insincerity in her voice and take the statement for the kindness it was meant to convey. "On you," she added after a second of reflection. "I mean, It looks good on you. New. Kind of different. But good."

Luke blinked once before saying, "Okay..." He drew the word out longer than necessary, and she blushed under his intense gaze.

"Thanks for the coffee," she said quickly before leaving.

* * *

In the weeks after he drove Lorelai home, she went into the diner every couple of days – always during the morning rush and always for a cup of coffee, to-go. She and Luke did not speak beyond the perfunctory greetings, order, and thanks, except once when she sneezed and he blessed her. 

The fake normality of it had begun to wear on Luke, especially since he knew she was still dating Christopher. Babette gave him unsolicited updates on the goings on at the Gilmore residence whenever she came in for food or to gossip with Miss Patty. The two of them alternated between giving him reassuring smiles and pitying looks when his back was turned.

The one bright spot who always managed to perk up Luke's day was April. Every day he found himself loving her more, even as he started to feel more settled in to the fatherhood role. She was smart, funny, cute, and always eager to learn and experience new things. Unlike him, almost nothing really bothered her, which made his fumbling attempts to get to know her better all the more successful.

But one thing about April had begun to weigh on his mind. It was becoming clear to him that she was a teenage girl. She had long since passed the age of jump-roping in the school yard, but even adolescence was now a thing of the past. April was changing – both mentally and physically, and there was nothing Luke could do about it.

He first took serious notice of this discovery when he found a stray maxi-pad under the sink in the bathroom. At first he dismissed it as a straggler that had somehow managed to survive the de-Lorelai-ing of his apartment. But then he realized its likely owner and paced the apartment for half an hour trying to clear his head of the notion that his daughter had somehow technically become a 'woman.' That was only the first straw.

Gradually, he began to take note of little things. Nail polish and lipgloss finding a prominent place in her bookbag. Boys' names scrawled on the edges of her bookcovers, scratched out and penciled in again. Long conversations with friends on her cell phone discussing exactly what Matt said to Julie at the bus stop before school. And one day he even found a well-worn Nora Roberts novel hidden under her bed in his apartment, a discovery which led to even more pacing and a bit of hand-wringing.

Fortunately for Luke, April's evolution into a teenage girl was greatly tempered by her down-to-earth nature and love of logic. More often than not she seemed skeptical of the bizarre things her classmates did and said, questioning the purpose of a belly-button ring or the safety of posting a minute-by-minute account of her life on MySpace. But underneath it all, he had a sneaking suspicion that he had just hit the tip of the iceberg with all this girl stuff.

And then, the dvds began to appear in his apartment. As April spent more and more evenings and weekends with him, he felt obligated to buy a dvd player for her, prompting a slow but steady accumulation of romantic movies in a pile next to his television set. This development worried him most of all because she had never struck him as the tv-obsessed type.

When he pointed that observation out to her one day while she was watching a very long British film, she simply responded with, "But it's _Pride and Prejudice_. It's a _classic_. Besides, we're supposed to pick one book, read it, and write a paper comparing it to a movie based on the same story." He nodded in understanding, glad to know there was an academic motive behind the seemingly uncharacteristic pastime. "And Colin Firth is cute," she added, destroying his peace of mind.

"Luke, she's thirteen. She's beginning to grow up," Anna assured him one evening when he dropped his daughter off at home. April had immediately disappeared into her room to check the acidity level of her acquarium and to return her friend Marsha's call.

"I don't want her to grow up yet," he grumbled. "I'm still trying to get used to her being... her, without up and changing on me."

Anna smiled sympathetically. "It could be a lot worse. Some kids become very rebellious at this age."

Images of Jess flashed through Luke's mind as his eyes went wide in fear. "Oh, I know."

"She's just doing what girls do. But I wouldn't say anything about the book. She'll think you were snooping."

Even though Anna's words were of some comfort, his increasing unease with the changes in April's behavior finally came to a head when on one Saturday afternoon she received a phone call at the diner from a friend. A friend who's name happened to be Chad.

She quickly explained that Chad was her lab partner in a science class and that he had only called the diner because her cell phone battery had unexpectedly died. Then her explanation took a left turn into DNA sequences, nucleotides, and a few well-chosen words about the validity of intelligent design theory, all of which proved so distracting that Luke momentarily forgot that a _boy _had called his daughter.

But by the time April had left the next afternoon to return home, his concern had returned with a vengeance, prompting him to take a trip to the bookstore in search of some sort of parenting manual. It was then that he realized he needed really need to consult an expert on teenage girls.

* * *

When Lorelai entered the diner on Monday morning, something seemed different. Everything was the same – the smells, the sounds, the people. But the atmosphere felt strangely light. She wondered if it was just her beginning to feel comfortable there again. 

But when she saw Luke, she immediately discounted that notion as she literally felt her breath hitch in her throat. As she never came into the diner on weekends any more, she had not seen him since the previous Thursday, and it struck her how deeply she had missed just seeing him, even if for the brief moment in which he took her order.

Luke was also wearing a new flannel shirt, one she had never seen before. The color was a lighter shade of blue, and it seemed designer-made to highlight his eyes. It looked soft and comfy, and Lorelai silently scolded herself for for the unpleasant pang of regret her thoughts brought.

"Good morning," she said as she reached the counter. Somehow, amid the early morning Monday hustle and bustle there was an open seat at the counter. Not that she was staying. She never stayed.

"What can I get you?" he asked, although this time, he did not use his well-rehearsed tone of detachment. He sounded... normal. Like himself.

"Coffee," Lorelai told him, not even bothering to sit down at the stool as she began reaching into her purse for money. They had gotten the exchange thing down to a science. She ordered (not that she needed to), he poured the liquid he hated and set it on the counter without comment, and then she would leave her money on the counter and take the cup. On some days no more than three words at the most passed between them.

But on this day, everything went out the window when he set in front of her regular mug filled almost to the brim with coffee. Even if she would have considered taking one of his mugs from the diner – something he had expressly forbidden long ago – there would be no way of doing so without spilling it everywhere.

"What do you want to eat?" he asked.

The question momentarily dumbfounded Lorelai as she stared at the full mug. The departure from their coffee routine was startling enough, but asking her for a food order sent her into full-blown confusion.

"Um..."

"This morning I have chocolate chip pancakes, blueberry waffles, cheese danishes, plus everything usually on the menu."

She looked at him as though he had momentarily lost all control of his faculties before mustering a response. "Uh, nothing, thanks. Just coffee." She was about to ask for a to-go cup when he surprised her again.

"Pancakes it is. I'll have that for you in just a second."

He said it with such conviction, Lorelai momentarily wondered if she actually had ordered pancakes and just thought she had limited herself to coffee. But before she had time to form any kind of coherent reply, he had disappeared into the kitchen, leaving her with the single option of drinking her coffee and waiting for him to return.

Pancakes did sound good.

Within a few minutes, he had brought her a plate of fresh chocolate chip pancakes complete with extra syrup and a side order of bacon – one of her favorite meals. She was suddenly quite sure Luke had not misheard her and looked up at him questioningly.

"What's going on?" she asked.

Luke glanced around before hunching forward a little over the counter. "I need some advise," he said softly.

"About what?"

"Girls."

Lorelai was completely taken aback at his candor. He wanted her advise about members of the opposite sex? Their quasi-friendly relationship had just taken a bizarre turn.

"Um... well, yeah, I guess..." She closed her eyes a second as if to mentally pinch herself and make sure she was not in the middle of one of those awful, embarrassing dreams that usually involve showing up to work naked. But no, Luke was still standing there, watching her expectantly. "Wait. Are you sure this is something you want to talk with _me _about?" she asked.

Luke shrugged. "Well, sure. You're kind of an expert. I mean, you have the point of view I need."

"Yeah, but... isn't it a little... weird?" He shook his head, and she found herself wondering why their break-up was affecting her so much more than it obviously was him. "Okay, what's your question?"

Luke once again looked around as thought to assure himself no one was listening in on their conversation before speaking. "Is it normal... I mean, should I be concerned..." He paused, obviously not sure how to broach the subject.

"Would you rather discuss this in private?" Lorelai suggested, not sure she wanted to talk about it in full view of the diner patrons either.

His expression of utter relief would have been comical if she was not dreading the conversation like a visit to the dentist. "Would you mind? I'd really appreciate it."

"Um... okay." She began to stand up so that they could go upstairs to his apartment or perhaps even outside, but Luke quickly stopped her with a waive of his hand.

"Oh, not right now. Eat your pancakes. I probably shouldn't leave Caesar with the morning rush anyway," he said. She shrugged, glad for the reprieve, and took a bite of the delicious meal before he added, "But maybe we could talk... later?"

Her mouth full of pancake, Lorelai merely nodded her ascent.

"Okay, good. What about after work? You have any plans?" She shook her head, although in truth she had no idea. The surrealism of the situation had robbed her of almost all rational thought. "Well, how about you come by the diner. I'll fix you something to eat, and in exchange maybe I could pick your brain a little. Sound okay?"

"Sure..."

And with that, Lorelai had a date with her ex-fiance at his diner so he could get advice from her about women, presumably some specific woman he wanted to date. The sinking feeling in her gut would have depressed her if the happy prospect of spending time with him had not been so distracting.

* * *

"He said he wants advise about women?" Sookie demanded, having been told the whole story later that afternoon in an effort to search for some sort of hidden meaning. 

"That's what he said. Well, 'girls,' but I know what he meant." Lorelai had maintained her composure all the way to the inn before dissolving into a mass of utter confusion in front of her friend. "He said he needed my point of view, that I'm an 'expert.' What am I supposed to think?" She threw up her hands in defeat.

"Maybe this is his way of trying to get back together?" her friend suggested cautiously but without bothering to hide her favor of the notion.

"See, I wondered that too. But that's not what it sounded like. He was just so _casual _with the whole thing."

"But he wanted to talk in _private_," Sookie pointed out, putting a mischievous, dirty spin to the last word.

Lorelai responded, "That doesn't mean anything. Luke hates people knowing his business. It took me a year to figure out his last name, and even then I only found out because I cheated and looked at his mail."

"Well, maybe he was worried about someone overhearing and making a big deal about it, you know, in case you said 'no.'" She glanced over at her friend. "Would you?"

"Would I what?"

"Say 'no'?"

Lorelai shook her head in confusion. "Say 'no' to what?"

"If he wanted to get back together!"

"Sookie..." she sighed, but the chef was not to be avoided.

"I mean, I know you're technically dating Christopher right now, but this is _Luke_."

The mention of his name hit Lorelai like a slap to the face as she suddenly remembered that she was, indeed, dating her daughter's father. "Sookie, I'm with Chris. You want me to keep jumping back and forth like some kind of trampy ping-pong ball?"

"I'm just saying..." She held up her hands in a calming gesture as she continued, "Christopher or no Christopher, you're in love with Luke. Pretending you're not is no good for anyone."

Frowning at the blatant reminder of her feelings, Lorelai grumbled, "Well it doesn't matter, does it? Luke doesn't love me, at least not enough. He made that perfectly clear." Suddenly, something occurred to her and her face twisted in mortification.

"What?" Sookie asked.

"I just remembered – I'm supposed to go out with Chris tonight. We made plans last week to go to a concert in New York."

"And these big plans, they just slipped your mind when you were talking to Luke?"

She rolled her eyes in irritation. "Sookie, he practically ambushed me, with the real coffee mug and the pancakes and everything. I wasn't thinking clearly."

"Well, looks like you've got two choices." Her friend gave her a knowing smile before returning to her work preparing lunch.

Unfortunately, to Lorelai, there really was only one choice. She pulled out her cell phone and began dialing.

"Hey, Chris? Yeah, it's me... Listen, I know we're supposed to go to New York tonight, but something here at work just came up and I'm not going to be able to make it..."


	4. Sliding Doors

**Chapter 4: Sliding Doors**

"Can I get you something to eat?" Luke asked almost immediately as she entered the diner.

The strange sort of normality in the moment hit them both at the same time, and a second passed before Lorelai managed to answer. Between the guilt over lying to Christopher and worrying about this 'giving Luke romantic advice' thing, food had been the last thing on her mind all day. "Um, sure."

"Burger?"

"Yeah, sounds good."

"Okay, then..." Luke paused, looking around the nearly empty diner before saying, "Why don't you pick a table and I'll be back in a few minutes and we can talk." He clasped his hands together the way he did when he was feeling nervous or unprepared. The gesture reassured her that she was not the only one effected by the oddness of the situation.

Knowing Luke's desire for privacy, she took advantage of the surprisingly light dinner crowd and seated herself at the empty table nearest the cash register. By the time he returned with her food, she felt certain that she had steeled herself for anything he could throw at her.

But his opening question still managed to floor her.

He dropped his voice to barely more than a whisper as he asked, "You don't by any chance use... woman... items that come in green, do you? Cause I found something, and I was wondering if it was something you might have left at my place."

She stared at him in total dismay until he carefully flashed the green item in question – a feminine hygiene pad. Lorelai recognized the brand from having seen it at the store, but it was not a brand she had ever used. She shook her head in bewilderment even as her mind began to race with possibilities. The main thought that occurred to her was that Luke had been dating so many women since their break-up that he could not narrow down the pad's owner to just one individual. She did not have a chance to wonder why exactly he would need to identify the owner before his response caused her even greater confusion.

He seemed disappointed but clearly not surprised. Sighing heavily, he stuffed the item back into his pocket before explaining, "Then it must be April's. I guess I was kind of hoping she wasn't growing up this fast."

Like a key in a lock, everything suddenly clicked for Lorelai. April. Girls. He wanted advise about April, not some woman he was dating. And he had approached _her_, called her the expert. He wanted her help. Considering the impetus for their break-up, the irony was not lost on her.

"Well..." she began, relying on her well-developed skill of talking about anything even as her mind raced to unravel the actual subject matter of the conversation. "She is thirteen, Luke. These days that's really a very common age for that particular event."

"I know, I know. It's just kind of... weird. Before, she was just this smart kid and that was intimidating enough on it's own. But I was getting the hang of it - the science fairs, the competitions and everything. Now she's not just a kid, she's a _girl_. And she's doing all this teenage girl stuff that I don't know anything about." His eyes widened in horror at whatever mysterious 'girl stuff' he was imagining.

Lorelai smiled at him, both in humor at his discomfort and affectionate sympathy.

"April is still the same person," she assured him. "She's just hit that age where girls start to look at the world a little differently. That doesn't mean you've lost all the progress you've made with her already."

"Did Rory go through this?" he asked.

"Go through what, becoming a teenager? Of course she did."

"No, I mean, yes. But... the make-up, the constant phone calls, the beauty magazines, romantic books, dvds-" He lowered his voice again, "-the green bathroom stuff."

Lorelai forced herself to grin rather than burst out laughing at the seriousness of his concern. "Yep, Rory went through all that. So did I. It's very normal." But then she stopped herself. "Wait, what dvds?"

Luke rolled his eyes. "Those chick flick movies you used to make me watch. A lot of the ones with... what's-her-name, the short-haired blond woman who's always falling in love with that guy from the movie about the idiot with the shrimp boat who sits on the bench..."

"Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks," she supplied.

"Yeah, them. And others. She's got a huge stack of them at the apartment. She says they're for a school project, but no one needs that many movies for a school project."

At this point, Lorelai could not help but simply shake her head in bemusement as she reached down to pick up the forgotten burger he had brought her. After taking a bite, she asked, "So, besides her new-found movie addiction, what exactly is the problem? Is she not spending time with you any more?"

"No, she comes over a couple of times a week."

"Is she driving you crazy with guy talk?"

Luke shook his head. "No, she only talks about boys on the phone with her friends."

"Well, then, until she starts piercing things, shaving her head, or sneaking out in the middle of the night, I think you can handle it."

"Lorelai..." He gave her a warning look.

"Luke, the whole teenage thing - you don't have to understand it. Most parents don't. Sure, I did, but that's because my maturity stalled out when I had Rory. Just let her be whoever she's becoming," Lorelai advised him. "Give her space and time and make sure she knows you're there for her, and it'll turn out okay."

"Yeah, but... I don't know anything about this stuff," he said in frustration. "At least with the science stuff I could get a book and try to figure it out so she doesn't think I'm a complete idiot. But there are no books for make-up and Meg Ryan. And what exactly is _myspace _anyway?"

"Luke, you don't need any books. You're her dad, not her stylist. She has friends to talk to about the make-up stuff, not to mention her mother, who I hate to be sexist about it, but is just more qualified to handle these kinds of things," she pointed out. "If she wants you to know about something she's interested in, she'll tell you. Or you can ask. Either way, you'll get points for showing that you're interested. My father never had any clue about the things I liked, but that was by choice."

"You barely get along with your father," Luke said in alarm.

"I barely get along with either of my parents, but that's a whole other issue. As far as applying my situation with them to you and April... All I can tell you is don't try to control her or make her feel that she isn't living up to some grand expectations." Shrugging her shoulders slightly, she concluded, "And I know you would never do that anyway, so problem, right?"

Luke paused for a moment as he stared out the window in thought. He had never been a big fan of change. It always made him uncomfortable, which was probably the reason he tried to limit it's effect on his life as much as possible. But when it came to April, change seemed inevitable. She was not a little girl anymore and never would be again. Within just a few short years, she would be an adult. And he did not want to spend what precious little time he had left with her before she reached that point playing catch-up.

"If I had been there from the beginning, this would be a lot easier," he said, as much to himself as to Lorelai.

She shook her head in contradiction. "Luke, it would still be hard. It's always hard when they start growing up."

"You never seemed to have this problem with Rory," Luke said. Most of his memories of the Gilmore girls involved Lorelai and her daughter laughing and talking and generally acting like one person in two bodies.

"Well, it's easy to bond with a teenage girl when you're practically a teenage girl yourself," she told him knowingly. "Besides, it's different with fathers and daughters."

"I guess," he conceded, although he did not sound entirely convinced.

"You and April are doing okay, right? It sounds like she likes hanging with you."

"Yeah."

"Then don't worry about it so much. Trust me, you'll have plenty of time to freak out later, when she starts dating."

Luke groaned fretfully in response. "She's half-way there already. A friend of hers named _Chad _called the diner last time she was here."

Lorelai laughed at the mixture of disgust and stark terror in his voice. "Okay, before you go all Tony Danza, don't forget that interacting with boys is a normal part of teenage life."

"Says the woman who stalked the bag boy at the grocery store after he kissed her daughter," Luke said sharply, pointing finger at her in mock accusation.

"Hey, you got into a fight with him _in the street _when they broke up!" she threw back good-naturedly.

He rolled his eyes at the memory. "Yeah, well..."

"See, you already have experience with this stuff."

Luke smiled at her, amazed at her ability to reassure him and give him confidence with something that had been troubling him for weeks. Granted, the idea of April actually dating a guy still made him very nervous, but he supposed that if he could survive Rory's dating years, he could make it through April's as well.

"You should eat," he said. "Your food's getting cold."

As she picked up the burger again, she looked at him with a pleading expression. "Luke...?" she drawled.

"Yeah, I'll get your coffee."

* * *

In the days that followed their conversation in the diner, Lorelai felt lighter than she had in a long time. She realized that one of the things she really missed most about Luke was the easy friendship they had developed through years of just talking at the diner. Teasing, banter, flirting – it had become an integral part of her life. And while their dinner together was a bittersweet reminder of what she had lost, what they had lost, it filled her with hope and a strange kind of peace. 

"It's funny," she confided in a phone call to Rory a few days later. "He's finally talking to me about April, and that's exactly what I wanted from him when we were engaged."

"Maybe it's easier now that the pressure's off," her daughter speculated. "He's not worrying about impressing you any more."

"What do you mean, he was trying to impress me?" she asked, incredulous.

"Well, I think maybe Luke just wanted to prove to you and to himself that he could do the whole 'dad' thing without help. You said he was worried about April liking you more than him. With you out of the picture, he doesn't have to worry about that any more."

Irritated at the implication, Lorelai complained, "Okay, Doctor Phil, thanks for the analysis. Maybe I should be a little meaner so people don't like me as much."

Rory paused on the other end of the line before tentatively asking, "You are out of the picture, right? I mean, you're not getting back together with Luke, are you?"

"No, I'm not getting back together with Luke," Lorelai sighed, annoyed that everyone kept asking her that. "We had dinner to talk about his daughter. That's it."

"I'm just asking because I don't want Dad to get hurt in all this," Rory said.

Thinking about how vigorously Christopher had pursued her since her split with Luke, she stated, "Dad can take care of himself."

"I'm just saying, Mom... it's Luke."

"_It's Luke_. Sookie said the same thing. How is that an argument? Luke is the one who didn't want to marry me. Luke is the one who didn't tell me about his daughter or hell, even want me around her because he felt threatened by me. Luke is the one who said we're not right for each other," she said in resignation. "So it really doesn't matter how I feel about it."

Rory quickly let the subject drop and they switched to a discussion of Paul Anka's latest quirks. After the grand redecoration he had taken to growling at random objects and, even more annoyingly, stealing Lorelai's socks. On some level, she suspected that he missed Luke as much as she did and was just acting out in his unique way.

"Hey, Mom?" Rory said tentatively just as they were about to hang up. "Did you ever wonder what it would have been like if you and Luke started dating when you first met?" Her voice was hesitant, the way a doctor gently probes a sore spot to determine the cause of the pain.

"All the time, kid."

"It would have been nice to have Luke as a step-father when I was April's age. I can totally see him freaking out over the tampons and training bras in the bathroom."

Lorelai smiled at the mental image despite the sudden ache it caused in her chest. "He wouldn't have let us eat as much junk food as we did," she said.

"Yeah, but he would have cooked real food," Rory argued. "And fixed the porch light. And changed the water bottle."

"It would have been nice," she agreed sadly. Cradling the phone to her ear, she looked around the kitchen – the only room in the house left untouched by the renovations after they got engaged. And yet, that one room held so many memories of the man she now called her ex-fiance. And it could have held so many more.

"I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't meant to depress you," her daughter interjected after a moment of silence.

"I'm okay," she said with false cheerfulness. "But I should let you go. I have a date with Chris tonight."

After hanging up the phone, Lorelai walked purposefully upstairs and began sorting through her clothing. In the end, she chose something new, something she had bought on a whim because it did not remind her of Luke.

* * *

The one thing Luke had found to be almost universally true about women was the unexplainable love of shopping. Anna had enjoyed it a great deal, sometimes to a fault. Lorelai found pleasure in it mostly as a social activity, going with either Rory or himself. Even Rachel had tended to disappear with friends for a few hours on weekends only to return with bags full of clothing he felt certain she did not need. Women never needed that much clothing. 

So it was no surprise that the youngest female in his life shared an affinity for this pastime. He did not realize it then, but Luke was lucky in April's choice of stores. Target had the advantages of being both economical and popular enough to appeal to the younger generation. Plus it had an entire section devoted to baby stuff.

"What about this?" April asked him, holding up a tiny pink dress complete with lacy ruffles at the hem.

"I think it would be embarrassing if she has a boy," he commented. They were looking for something to give Liz at the baby shower she was throwing herself. Unfortunately, she and TJ had decided not to learn the sex of the baby, thereby making baby clothes shopping nearly impossible.

"That's okay, I don't like it anyway," she assured him. She picked up another outfit, this one a cotton shirt/skirt combo in blue camouflage. "This is cute, but I really don't understand the whole appeal of camo. It's like people are trying to take something designed to make you fit in and use it to stand out."

Luke rolled his eyes in agreement, stating, "I know, what is with that? And blue camouflage? Aren't they kind of defeating the purpose?" Glancing around at the sea of baby clothes, he suggested, "Maybe we should get her something practical, like a baby monitor or something."

April thought for a second about this before concluding, "Why do I get the feeling TJ would just it as a walkie talkie?" He laughed in response even as they began walking towards the 'stuff' section of the baby area. "How about a stroller?" she said.

"Yeah, Liz would like that," Luke agreed, but began to reconsider the idea upon reaching the stroller aisle. "Wow, there sure are a lot of choices."

They stood side by side for several moments studying the selection. Not only did they come in a variety of colors, but the myriad of options made Luke's head spin. "Well, this one has cup holders," he said, pointing at one in green. "That's probably a nice feature – be able to put your coffee down when you're pushing the kid around. Not that Liz should be drinking coffee..."

Unbidden, an image came to his mind of a pregnant Lorelai pushing the stroller with a _Luke's _to-go cup in the holder while he followed behind her ranting about her breeding an addict.

"I think that's only applicable while she's still pregnant. If she's using the stroller, she probably won't be pregnant any more." April gestured to another, "That one has a convertible car seat."

He nodded in approval, but added, "It's pink."

After several more minutes of quiet reflection on the various strollers, she turned and said, "What about a crib?"

"Liz said that TJ's making her a crib," he informed her.

"Ah."

Luke left unstated the assumption that he would have to inspect any such TJ-made crib before its use, just for his own peace of mind. As much as he loved his sister and her well-intentioned but sometimes idiotic husband, sometimes they just needed a reality check. "Hey, I have an idea," he said.

Twenty minutes later, they were pushing a cart overflowing with baby items towards the exit. In a fit of pragmatism, they had picked up everything they knew Liz and TJ would need but would not think to buy for themselves: diapers, bibs, baby soap, a baby bath tub, safety latches for all the cabinets, and one of those strap-on carriers a passing mother of four had informed them was absolutely essential.

"Wow, babies need a lot of stuff," April commented.

"They're pretty expensive," Luke agreed as he paid the woman at the register and they began to walk out to his truck.

"My mom says they're a lot of work."

"I'm sure they are."

"I can't believe Lorelai managed to do all this when she was just sixteen..."

April had studiously avoided the topic of his ex-fiance ever since his request for her to 'drop it' on the way back from dinner at Liz's. But word of Lorelai's visits to the diner had made the rounds of Star's Hollow in record time, and she sensed that his recent good mood was a direct result.

While she had no desire to wake the sleeping giant of Luke's displeasure (although she usually found his rants amusing), April knew that the only way to achieve results in any experiment was to push the acceptable envelope. Besides, she wanted her father to be happy.

"Yeah, she's pretty amazing like that," he said simply.

"So, if Lorelai came to town right after she had Rory, how come you didn't meet her until Rory was my age?" she asked, sounding as though she had already given the matter a lot of thought. "Star's Hollow isn't very big."

She did have a valid question, one even Luke was not sure how to answer. Certainly he could speculate that when Lorelai lived at the inn those first years of Rory's life she had little enough money to be eating at the diner, and she had Sookie. Or perhaps Luke was simply too caught up in his own life to notice her, first with the unstable come-and-go relationship with Rachel and then his dad dying and him subsequently opening the diner. Not to mention how many weekends he spent in New York bailing Liz out of whatever mess she had made for herself, finding her a new apartment, a new job, a new life.

By the time Lorelai arrived in his life, vivacious and full of quirky energy, he was ready for her. Years of taking care of Liz had taught him patience and a healthy respect for single mothers. His time with Rachel gave him insight into women with talent and purpose. Even the short-lived relationship with Anna had given him an appreciation for creativity, spontaneity, and the need to be with someone who understood you. He and April's mother had never really understood each other, probably the reason they broke up.

Then one day, a woman with curly brown hair and brilliant blue eyes ran into his diner in search of coffee and subsequently changed his world forever.

Luke rolled his eyes in annoyance at the maudlin notion. Lorelai was just a woman, as flawed and imperfect as everyone else. She drank too much coffee and ate things he deemed too disgusting to be actual food. But she loved her daughter and she loved the town that had adopted her. She attended town meetings, had put her daughter in Miss Patty's dance classes, worked at the inn, ate at Al's Pancake world, and never missed a festival. She had also made the costumes for the school plays, something that always reminded Luke of his mother. She was friendly to everyone, even Kirk, and she and her daughter just had a way of enchanting those around them.

Lorelai Gilmore had made it too easy to fall in love with her, and that was probably why he could not bring himself to hate her now, even with everything that had happened between them.

"Dad?" April prompted finally, concerned about his sudden silence. They had been sitting in the truck with him staring out the window into space for at least half a minute. "Can you hear me?"

"Sorry, I just zoned out for a second," he said, reaching down to turn on the ignition.

"You never answered my question."

"What was your question?"

"How come you and Lorelai didn't meet sooner?" she repeated cautiously. She suspected that he would give her another curt response or avoid the subject altogether.

But he surprised her. "I think we met when it was the right time for us to meet," he said simply.

April nodded as she processed the significance of his reply. She sensed that as far as Lorelai was concerned, Luke still had a lot to work through on his own. He obviously had a lot of unresolved hurt and anger, sublimated though it was. But he was starting to see through it. She hoped that once he had, he would be able to realize that he could fix things with Lorelai. And while April had only the vaguest notion of what had gone on between them, she knew that as much as he loved her, whatever it was _could _be fixed.

For his part, Luke was so distracted by thoughts of his initial easy friendship with Lorelai that they were half-way home before he realized that for the first time, April had called him "Dad."


	5. Pride & Prejudice

**A/N**: This chapter is quite a bit longer than usual, but I didn't want to break it up in the middle. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed. I really appreciate the feedback and encouragement.

As well, I apologize in advance for any unintentional butchering I may have done to the sport of hockey or the Hartford Connecticut Wolf Pack.

* * *

**Chapter 5: Pride & Prejudice**

During the fall season, Thursdays were always the most harrowing for Lorelai. For some reason, the vacationers deciding to take an extra long weekend trip and arrive on Thursday tended to be a little more type-A than those who checked into the inn on Fridays. They were more obnoxious, more demanding, and inevitably, they annoyed Michel to the point that he made the problem even worse by being rude back. Thus, by Thursday afternoon, Lorelai usually had the beginnings of a killer headache and the need for a serious caffeine fix.

This was probably the reason she did not notice April's presence at the counter until she was already in the diner and standing next to her.

"April... hi," she said, trying to mask her surprise. Ever since renewing communication with Luke following their break-up, Lorelai had studiously avoided coming to the diner when she was there. She considered it a silent favor to stay out of his personal life and maintain their roles as purely customer/diner-owner. Lorelai was not entirely sure where advise-giving fit into their little unspoken arrangement, but she felt certain that contact with April was definitely out of bounds.

"Hey, Lorelai!" the girl said, flashing her a friendly smile. "I didn't know you were coming in today. This is so cool! How's it going?"

"Um, it's going good," she said, a little curious about April's obvious excitement but figuring it was better not to ask. "Just stopping in for some coffee."

"My dad's upstairs. He's arguing with someone on the phone, which is always kind of fun to listen to, but he told me to come downstairs. I don't think he likes it when I hear him yell. Do you want me to go get him?" she offered.

"Oh, no. That's okay. I think Lane can help me. Lane?" She spotted her daughter's best friend coming out of the kitchen and gave her a little wave. "Coffee?" she implored.

Noticing who Lorelai was standing next to, Lane gave her a sympathetic nod and moved to pour her a to-go cup.

"So, I haven't seen you around in a long time," April said casually. "Not since my birthday."

Feeling like an animal caught in some sort of trap, Lorelai could only shrug helplessly at the question. "Well, as I'm sure you know, your dad and I broke up, so..."

"Oh, I know," she stated. "But you two are still friends, right?" Lorelai hesitated for only the briefest second before April said, "I mean, you still come to the diner, so I sort of assumed you were still friends."

"Um, yeah, we're friends," she responded with more certainty than she felt. She really was not sure how to define their relationship, but denying friendship directly to the man's daughter was just asking for trouble. Besides, she did want to be friends with Luke, to keep him in her life if she could, no matter how difficult, painful, or awkward the process was at first.

"Well, I have a question," April declared. "See, we've been hanging out a lot, and I think I've gotten to know him pretty well. But you've known Luke for ten years, which is a lot longer than me, so you probably know him a whole lot better."

"I wouldn't say that necessarily-" Lorelai tried to say but was interrupted.

"See, his birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I want to get him something that he'll like. The problem is, while I know what he likes, just in general, I have no idea what I could buy him that he'll like. Something baseball maybe, but he doesn't really have anything baseball, so even though I know he likes baseball, I'm not sure that's something he'll like, you know?" She spoke so rapidly that even Lorelai, who was used to fast talking, had trouble keeping up.

"Yeah, sure. That's a tough one," she agreed. She herself had always encountered problems when buying Luke gifts for the major occasions. Little tokens and items she picked up on a whim were easy – a new belt, a shirt that matched his eyes, a book she thought he'd enjoy. But the major occasions like Christmas and birthdays tended to prove more difficult.

"And I know he'll say he likes whatever I give him, because he's like that," April continued on. "But I want to get him something he'll really like, not just something he says he likes and really doesn't but then later convinces himself he likes just because I got it for him."

"I see your quandary," Lorelai sympathized. "How's that coffee coming along there, Lane?" she called out.

"Sorry, Lorelai. There's not enough regular for a whole cup, so I'm making you a fresh pot," the young woman told her.

"So, what do you think I should get him?"

"Geez, April, I don't know...

Before she could even think of an idea to suggest, April had begun talking again. "Sorry, that's probably an awkward question since you two aren't engaged any more. I mean, it kind of puts you in the position of thinking about what _you _would get him if you were still together, which is just a reminder that you're _not _anymore, and..." She paused, noticing the growing uneasiness in Lorelai's expression. "And, I'm making it worse, aren't I? Okay, shutting up now..."

"No, it's fine, really," she insisted. "I just... don't know what to tell you. Luke's never really been a material sort of guy."

"I thought about getting him a new hat 'cause I really hate the one he's been wearing lately, but that didn't seem very thoughtful."

Lorelai felt torn between agreeing with her about the hat and wanting to stay away from the subject for Luke's sake. After all, she really had no business gossiping with his daughter about his choice in head-wear, no matter how well intentioned. At the same time, she knew he was trying very hard to bond with his teenage daughter, and it was obvious April wanted the same thing.

"Well... instead of getting him something physical like a hat or a shirt, maybe you could plan to do something with him," she said finally. "I know he likes spending time with you, so maybe you could arrange for something special you two could do together."

April cocked her head to the side as she considered it. "You think he'd like that? Just going to do something with me? Like a baseball game or fishing?"

"I think he'd _love _doing something with you," Lorelai said easily. "But just try to avoid any shows in New York. He's definitely not a big fan of musicals."

"Who's not a big fan of musicals?"

Both turned to see Luke approaching them as he emerged from behind the curtain leading up to his apartment. April shot her a pleading look not to ruin whatever surprise she had yet to plan.

"Um... Taylor's not," Lorelai said quickly, glancing out the window a second before she pointed in the older man's direction. He was standing in the square overseeing the placement of the Thanksgiving decorations, including dozens of paper turkeys being hung from the trees. Concocting the lie even as she spoke, Lorelai explained, "Lane was talking about how every year, Taylor bugs you to put up Thanksgiving decorations, and April was wondering the best way to keep him off your back. So I suggested singing show tunes to drown him out, because he's not a big fan of musicals."

Lane, who had been listening in on the earlier conversation between Lorelai and April, smiled in amusement even as Luke's daughter nodded enthusiastically in agreement with the Taylor story.

"Well, I usually just yell at him, and that tends to work pretty good," Luke said, glancing uneasily between the three women. He obviously sensed something was not quite right.

"Here's your coffee, Lorelai," Lane pronounced, setting the to-go cup on the counter in front of her.

"Oh, thank you. Fresh coffee, just what I needed. Guess I'll see you all later," Lorelai said quickly. She left her money on the counter and was out the door before anyone could say goodbye.

* * *

Luckily for Lorelai, the two weeks leading up to Luke's birthday were extraordinarily busy at the inn, rarely leaving her with time to put two coherent thoughts together, let alone agonize over whether she should get her ex-fiance something for his birthday. After the talk with April, part of her wanted to go out in search of the perfect post break-up, I'll-always-be-your-friend gift. Luckily, the more rational portion of her brain limited her to a humorous Garfield card she found at the bookstore in which she scribbled a deliberately neutral birthday greeting. And following a long struggle over whether to write "best wishes," "sincerely," or "love," the last of which was the most accurate but clearly unacceptable, she simply signed her name at the end. 

Lorelai also found that her hectic schedule limited her time spent with Christopher, a development he greatly disliked. But even when she called to tell him she would be late or had to cancel one of their dates altogether, he always hid his disappointment well. While she could sometimes hear a note of pleading in his voice, he never got angry or immature about it. He just told her he would stop by later in the evening to see her, which was usually code for, "Wear something nice to bed."

On most of those nights, Lorelai did not protest about being too tired or not in the mood. Instead, she let Christopher's enthusiasm be enough for both of them as she lost herself in the heady feeling of being wanted. It did not matter that it all felt wrong – his smell, the fabric of his shirt against her skin, the emptiness inside her afterwards. He was there and he wanted to be with her.

It did not matter that she still dreamed of Luke.

* * *

April ended up taking Lorelai's advice, and for his birthday she decided to give her father tickets to a hockey game. She remembered that he had once mentioned liking hockey, although she could not pinpoint exactly when. After a thorough search of the internet for the most promising local games, she picked the local Hartford American Hockey League team – the Wolf Pack. They had several games around the time of Luke's birthday, but all were away at other locations. So she ended up buying tickets for a home game the day before Thanksgiving, figuring Luke would not mind. 

April not only surprised him with the tickets, but he seemed genuinely shocked at her knowledge of his birthday and pointedly asked the source of her information.

"Luke, you've lived in this town forever. Everyone knows your birthday, even though you never seem to celebrate it. And by 'everybody,' of course I mean Miss Patty," she informed him. "Besides, Connecticut has excellent online access to public records."

"Identity thieves must be very happy," Luke grumbled characteristically, but he was genuinely touched by her thoughtfulness. "You've only got two tickets here. Are you sure you don't want to invite your mom or one of your friends? Maybe even.. Chad?" He barely suppressed the shudder that accompanied the boy's name, but April smiled at the effort.

"Nah, I thought it would be fun just the two of us. Unless you wanted to invite someone else...?" she asked in a suggestive tone.

"Just us is fine," he agreed.

By the time the night of the game arrived, April had managed to work up her excitement for the event to a nearly unbearable level. Not that she was much of a hockey fan, or even really a sports fan in general, but she always looked forward to new experiences.

"I don't think I've ever seen them play before," Luke said as they found their seats.

"I looked them up on the internet when I was ordering the tickets," April told him. "They're not having a good season."

"That happens."

But as it turned out, the team managed to do rather well, and by the end of the second period they were winning. Throughout the match, she asked questions about the game and the tactics the players used, and Luke proudly imparted his knowledge on the subject, glad she had chosen an activity he both understood and enjoyed.

And just as importantly, April seemed to have a good time. She kept her attention glued to the rink like a scientist observing the Galapagos Islands for the first time with their own eyes. However, at one point, two of the players got into a heated exchange ending with one pushing the other roughly up against the glass. As an inevitable fight ensued, Luke immediately glanced at his daughter, afraid of her reaction.

"Kind of a rough sport," he said uneasily.

"It's definitely interesting," April stated, completely unwilling to take her eyes off the fight, which one of the referees had begun trying to break up. "And don't a lot of people watch hockey _because _of the violence?"

"That's not what hockey's supposed to be about," Luke muttered, more annoyed with the stereotype than her comment.

"Well, I can definitely see the appeal there, but that's not why it's interesting." Cocking her head to one side, she studied the players as she continued, "There's just something about the elegance of it, the team work and the strategy and quick thinking. They always have something going on. With football, they constantly stop the game. And baseball's cool, but the action is all in one place. But with hockey-" She pointed at the rink, "-they barely stop for anything, and they're all over the place."

Luke nodded in agreement with her assessment. Although he enjoyed most sports and believed each had it's own positive and negative aspects, he liked that she cared enough to formulate an opinion on the subject.

"We should come back," April suggested. "Maybe even buy season tickets. They have a bunch of games next month."

"Yeah, that would be fun," he said immediately. Then it dawned on him that perhaps she was only suggesting it out of a sense of obligation. "But we don't have to if you don't want to. I'm sure you've got a lot going on with school and your friends..."

But April just shook her head, slowly at first and then with more confidence as she searched her memory for any plans she had already made. "I'll have a long break from school, and all my friends are going out of town on vacations. Skiing mostly. There's a sport I've never understood. I bet I'll have _a lot _of casts to sign when school starts again."

"Okay then," Luke said, almost grinning at the prospect of doing something with his daughter besides just hanging out at the diner or going shopping - something very far from the teenage-girl aspects of her life that had begun to make him feel so nervous and out of place around her.

After the game, to celebrate the end of the Wolf Pack's recent losing streak, April insisted on plundering the gift stand for t-shirts and anything else absolutely necessary for a fledgling hockey fan. She even used her own money to buy Luke a new hat (black, with a WP emblem), ostensibly to mark the occasion but secretly to replace the one she did not like.

As she handed it to him, she said, "Happy birthday."

He took it with a smile but after gesturing to their surroundings contradicted, "You already got me a present."

"Well actually, I almost got you a new hat before, but I decided that wasn't thoughtful enough. And birthday presents should be thoughtful. I was having a hard time to figure out what to get you, because you are really hard to shop for. So you may get the same thing for Christmas. We'll see."

Luke chuckled a little at her annoyance with the gift-giving difficulties but liked her mention of the holidays. Because of his hesitance to begin a relationship after finding out about April so suddenly, they had not spent the previous year's Christmas together. It was one of Luke's many regrets regarding how he handled that situation.

"Well, I had fun, so you picked good," he said as they both got into the truck.

"I really can't take all the credit," April confessed. "It was actually kind of Lorelai's idea."

The mention of her name stopped Luke cold.

"It was her idea?" he asked, his voice painfully quiet.

April did not notice the change in his demeanor as she replied, "Yeah, well when I ran into her at the diner, I asked her what she thought you might like because I was having trouble coming up with ideas. And she said you weren't really a material sort of person, which makes sense. And then she suggested planning something we could do together. And I thought this might be fun."

"So that's what you were talking about that day?" he asked after a moment of reflection. "Not decorations."

"No, she knew I wanted it to be a surprise," April explained, completely oblivious to the annoyed expression that had settled on Luke's face.

"She did, huh?" he said blandly, then fell silent. The mention of Lorelai, while not an surprising addition into their conversation (April delighted in dropping her name), was an unwelcome intrusion into an evening Luke had otherwise thoroughly enjoyed. And the realization that she had been the mastermind of his daughter's gift was far more irksome rather than touching.

They had been talking about him. Lorelai had said he was not a "material" person. What did that mean exactly? And more importantly, what else had she said about him?

While it never would have occurred to him that his ex-fiance would say bad things about him behind his back, the notion of her discussing him with his daughter made him feel nervous and unbearably self-conscious. Were they trading stories about his ineptitude with the female sex? Was Lorelai giving her 'pointers' on how to 'handle' him?

And beyond all those concerns, the situation smacked of that which he had feared all along: April liking Lorelai more than him. April wanting to hang out with her and bond with her as the fun parental figure. Lorelai's vivacious personality and quick wit made her the type of person he had no hope of ever competing with, especially when it came to a teenage girl.

Obviously that fear had not died with the end of their relationship. Now, not only did he have to worry about competing with Lorelai for April's attention, but he also had to suffer the added insult of receiving her unsolicited help with his daughter (at least in that particular instance). And they were not even dating anymore!

Perhaps it was best that Luke was too distracted by his own thoughts to hear April's final comment on the subject of hockey. "You know, I'm sure they have really bad teeth and scars all over the place, but from a distance, hockey players are kind of cute."

* * *

Later that night, Lorelai was in her office reviewing the arrangements for the Browders' fall-themed wedding set for the following weekend when she heard his voice. Even if his distinctively deep timbre had not immediately caught her attention, the obviously angry and argumentative tone would have been a red flag. But before she could do more than stand up, he was in her doorway, the flustered night manager hovering behind at a safe distance. 

"Luke-" she began cautiously, but he instantly cut her off.

"What are you doing talking to my kid?" he demanded so loudly it came out as a shout. Every line of his face was etched with anger, every muscle tensed, both eyes blazing as hot as a furnaces.

She stood in utter confusion, unable to say anything but a strangled, "What?"

"April. _My kid_, Lorelai. What are you doing telling her what to do for my birthday?" he exploded. "Just because I came to you for advise doesn't give you the right to butt into my life with my kid!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, I didn't-"

Luke interrupted, "She is off limits, do you understand me?"

"Is that what you're upset about? I didn't butt into your life with your kid!" Lorelai shouted back, incensed by his anger. "She _asked me _a question and I gave her the best answer I could, which was barely anything. Why are you so mad about this?"

"I wanted to get to know her on my terms, Lorelai. She's my daughter, not yours. And if she wants to give me something, I want it to be something _she _thinks of, not you. I'd rather her give me a towel rack or a soap dish she made in shop than something she does to impress you."

"I really don't see April taking shop," she said jokingly, hoping to lighten the moment. But seeing the look of anger on his face harden, she gave up. Crossing her arms over her stomach protectively, Lorelai gently but firmly pointed out, "You were the one who asked my advise, remember?"

"That was obviously a mistake," he said bitterly.

Lorelai shook her head in hurt and anger even as she fought back the sudden rush of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. She had actually begun to feel hopeful about them, that they could recapture some measure of the close friendship they once shared. But it was obvious the fractures ran too deep.

"This isn't about April and you know it," she told him finally, the truth becoming apparent to her as she said the words.

"Of course it's about April," Luke denied.

"No, this is about me and Christopher and how you're still angry. You wouldn't get mad at me about what I told April – that's just an excuse for what's really bothering you."

She said it so matter-of-factly and with such conviction, that he immediately realized it was true. He had been struggling so hard to maintain his indifference that he had succeeded only in covering it up. And the moment the opportunity arose, it had come back to him as surely as the rising tide.

"Fine," he spit out, making the word sound like a curse. "I am mad at you. And I think I have a right to be! You slept with Christopher – on the night we broke up! If you can even call it that. _I _certainly didn't think we'd broken up. But no, you drove straight over there and spent the night with him. That night!" Throwing his arms up in a gesture of utter frustration, he demanded, "Who does that, Lorelai? _Who does that_?"

"I didn't do it to hurt you-" she began.

"Then why'd you do it?" he persisted, his anger tinged with long-suppressed pain. "Was I really that horrible that you had to punish me by sleeping with him?"

"I said I didn't do it to hurt you!" she repeated more forcefully. "I didn't even go over there for that. But I was hurting and he was there and we were over, so-"

Luke interrupted her again, saying sharply, "_You _thought we were over. Guess I didn't get the memo on that one."

"I asked you to elope, and you said no!" she shouted. "Where is the mystery in that?"

"I didn't say no, I said not right then. God, Lorelai, you just showed up after avoiding me for two days and demand we go get married! I wasn't ready."

"Well, I was," she said, more softly this time as she wiped furiously at the tears that had begun leaking from the corner of each eye. "I was ready and willing, and I thought you were too. I thought that's what it means when you get engaged, that you're ready to get married and share your life with someone. That's all I wanted, Luke – to be married to you and live in that house and this town and grow old together. To actually feel like a part of your life and not just some woman who you pour coffee for. "

Luke paused a moment as he digested her words. Part of him felt ashamed and disgusted with himself for his behavior, for contributing to their downfall. But another part of him could not get over the image of Lorelai walking away from him that night, forever linked in his mind with her guilty confession of having slept with Christopher. For him, it all came down to that, the ultimate betrayal. He could believe nothing she said anymore after having slept with that man.

"You were so ready to marry me that you slept with him a few hours after we supposedly broke up," he stated angrily, "And then, within weeks, you started dating him. Doesn't sound like you were too attached to me after all."

"You're the one who said we weren't meant to be, that I belonged with someone like Christopher." While she tried to sound cold and detached, her voice wavered unsteadily. "And at least he wants to be with me! He doesn't act like I'm intruding by wanting to be a part of his life. He _wants _me to be a part of his life. He doesn't want me to hide and skulk around and pretend not to care that he doesn't want me around while he figures out how to be a parent all on his own. He _likes _me being around his daughter."

"Yes, because those situations are so similar," Luke spit out sarcastically. "I just found out about April-"

"Two months before you _told _me," she threw back at him. "Except, you didn't tell me. I walked into the diner and found her filling salt shakers. At least Chris told me when he found out Sherry was pregnant."

"He _left you_, you mean. And I don't remember you going on about what a great father Christopher was when he abandoned you and Rory – again and again."

Lorelai sensed that they were going completely off whatever topic they had started with, following the rabbit hole as far as it would go just for the sake of arguing and shouting at each other. Each comment was like a well-aimed missile salvo, designed to cause the other side as much emotional damage as possible. Luke was still mad at her, furious about Christopher. Nothing could change that. Nothing could undo what she had done that night, what he had done (or not done) in the months leading up to their parting. There was no going back, no salvaging a past with a man that hated her and refused to forgive her.

"This isn't about Christopher," she said finally. "It's about you and me-"

"Oh, I think it's partially about Christopher," he interrupted. "Seriously, Lorelai. How would you feel if that night I had driven to Woodbridge and slept with Anna? How would that make _you_ feel?" She said nothing in response, only looked down at some imaginary spot on the floor as her felt her skin flush with renewed guilt. "You think about that the next time you want to lecture me about being a bad fiance."

He turned to leave, but he had barely cleared the doorway her angry voice followed him. "Fine," she said, the tears welling up in her throat and crashing on her cheeks as she spoke. "But maybe you should think about how _you _would feel if I treated you the way you treated me. If I never introduced you to Rory. If I made you feel like you weren't good enough or permanent enough in my life to get to spend time with her. Or how you would feel if I never even _told you _she existed."

When she was done speaking, the door to Lorelai's office slammed loudly behind him, but even the solid wood barrier could not silence sounds of her devastated sobs.

* * *

The next day, Lorelai could barely force herself to attend dinner at the Gilmores. Had it been any other day than Thanksgiving, she would have gladly faked a bout of the flu and stayed curled up in bed all day with gallon of ice cream and reruns of the _Golden Girls_. But Rory was expecting her, and Chris was bringing Gigi. Besides, her mother had learned to tell when Lorelai was feigning illness before her tenth birthday. 

To say she felt depressed would have been overstating it, but only a little. The fight with Luke the night before had left her feeling empty and exhausted. She had also alternated between self loathing and seven kinds of crazy-mad. But most of all, she felt lost and alone, having witnessed that tiny flicker of hope for a reconciliation that she had been quietly nursing die an untimely death. Not that she had ever considered the possibility of getting back together with Luke. That was about as likely as winning the lottery or stumbling across the cure for cancer in her back yard.

All Lorelai wanted anymore was to return to the time when they were friends - before their _relationship_ got in the way of their relationship. Before secret daughters and diamond rings and horoscopes and moonlit dances. She just wanted to be able to enter the diner, hear the bell ding cheerfully over the door, and sit down at the counter in front of him before launching into some story or bit she had thought up on her walk over. She wanted him to grumble about her early death as he poured her a cup of coffee and then ask about Rory in that reluctantly paternal tone he sometimes used.

And deep down, when she allowed herself to admit it, she wanted him to look at her the way he used to look at her, longly and protective, like the friend she knew she could always count on. Like the man who had been secretly in love with her.

Not that she would ever see that look cross Luke's face again now.

Thanksgiving dinner turned out to be as much of a trial as Lorelai suspected, but for once her own bad mood was more to blame than her parents' condescending comments. Chris asked her repeatedly if anything was wrong, but she simply dismissed his concern with a vague comment about a headache and 'woman problems.' Rory was harder to fool and persisted in shooting her worried glances throughout cocktail hour and into dinner.

The highlight of the evening turned out to be precocious young Gigi. While Christopher had done wonders in improving her behavior through discipline, her table manners were still severely lacking. First, she slipped up during the soup course and began slurping the remainder from her bowl. This brought a sharp look from Emily but no verbal reproach. But during dinner, she accidentally dropped her fork on the ground and, seeing no need to retrieve it, began eating without it.

"Gigi, don't eat with your hands!" Emily scolded her. But instead of being appropriately contrite at the reprimand, Gigi simply shrugged and proceeded to wipe her palms on the white table cloth.

Lorelai could not help herself, breaking into a snicker even as her mother gasped in horror and Christopher launched into a lecture on inappropriate ways to clean one's self. By the time dessert arrived, she could tell that Gigi was planning either rebellion or an escape. She could see the four-year-old girl's eyes darting about as though scoping out the exits even as she avoided Emily's stern gaze.

Finally, she made her move, waiting until Richard was in the middle of a rather long and boring recantation of a stock market tip George Huffman had passed onto him before she announced in a loud, sing-song voice, "I have to go to the bathroom!"

"Okay sweetie..." Chris said, standing up.

"Hey, I'll take her," Lorelai offered, desperately needing a moment to herself anyway.

He smiled at the offer. "Thanks, Lor. Sweetie, Lorelai's going to take you, okay?"

Gigi got up to follow her, looking inordinately pleased with herself for having gotten away from the table. But before they were out of the room, Rory stood up as well. "I think I'll join you," she said.

"What is this, a high school dance?" Emily demanded sarcastically. "You don't all need to go together."

"I don't know, Mom. Your water pressure has always been really good. Too good, maybe," Lorelai quipped, making perhaps her first joke of the evening. "If Gigi gets sucked in, I might need Rory's help to pull her out."

"Grandma, we'll be right back," Rory assured her, and the three of them disappeared out of the dining room.

"So what's up with the following me to the bathroom act?" she asked her daughter when they reached the safety of the downstairs guest bathroom. "It's been a long time since you did that."

"What's with you?" Rory countered. "You've barely said two words all night."

Lorelai was distracted from answering by Gigi, who tugged insistently on the hem of her shirt. "I need help," she whined, picking at the tights Christopher had made her wear. They went well with the pretty red dress she had on, but Lorelai knew from her own experience how difficult they were for a pre-schooler to take on and off.

"I'm fine," she said, helping the girl remove the offending tights.

Rory put her hands on her hips and declared, "You missed three perfectly good opportunities to mock Grandma's choice of Thanksgiving dinner dishes tonight, not to mention at least one lost Paul Anka the dog/Paul Anka the human reference we can never get back again. _And_, I completely set you up for a George-Huffman-is-a-cylon joke, but you didn't even notice. You've barely even eaten anything all night."

Lorelai shrugged in response. "I'm just not very hungry."

"That's weird."

"Yeah."

"Isn't it weird just being here?" Rory asked. "I mean, we've always spent Thanksgiving back home. Or at least _one _meal in Star's Hollow."

Smiling at the memory of their many multiple-Thanksgiving dinners of the past, Lorelai asked, "But this is nice, right? Celebrating with your grandparents and your dad and Gigi."

"Yeah, it's nice," she agreed, although her heart was not in the answer. "It's just..."

"Our first year without Luke?"

Rory nodded. "We've always gone to the diner. Well, except for last year when we ate at the inn. But even that was sort of a Luke-Thanksgiving with Liz and TJ and everyone from the renaissance fair."

"You know, it's okay to miss Luke," Lorelai assured her. "And just because we broke up doesn't mean you have to feel bad about that or weird about him. He still cares about you."

She simply looked at her mother for a long moment before deducing, "You two had a fight, didn't you? That's why you've been so sad all night. What happened? I thought you were doing so well with going to the diner for coffee and tips on girl stuff and everything."

Lorelai sighed, torn between wanting to offer her daughter comfort and wanting to escape the subject. "There's just too much history, Rory, too much we can't get past. It was a nice idea, Luke and I going back to being friends, but I'm just note sure we can do it."

Rory did not have a chance to respond as Gigi interrupted them by proclaiming, "I'm done!"

As they returned to the table, Lorelai had a flashback to the night her mother had tried to set Christopher up with that psychologist. In that very guest bathroom, she had told Christopher she had his back, and he had assured her of the same. That same night she had sat in the back of Lynnie the psychologist's car and told her of all her fears and doubts. She had talked about wanting to get married and have another child and start that new life – all with Luke. Not with Max or Christopher or Digger Stiles or any of the other guys she had dated over the years, but Luke Danes. The man who got her and would protect her. The only man she had ever really loved.

"Isn't this just a picture-perfect family?" Emily asked, looking around at her guests. Lorelai did the same, noting as she did so that little Gigi was having trouble keeping her eyes open as her head drooped dangerously close to the edge of the table. Rory looked distracted, either by memories of the past or concern for her mother. Emily and Richard beamed proudly at one another as though they always knew this day would come. And Christopher – he just gazed at her adoringly across the table, the same way he had when they were fifteen and in the back of his father's car.

Emily was right. They did make a picture-perfect family. It just wasn't the picture Lorelai would have taken.

* * *

Dinner at Liz and TJ's house was certainly less lively without April in attendance. While Luke would have loved to have brought her, she was spending Thanksgiving with her mother and grandparents. He did not mind, seeing as how they had gotten to spend the previous day together. 

"That girl is so sweet," Liz gushed over the turkey he had insisted on cooking. Despite having a year to practice, she had still not gotten her cooking skills up to 'Martha' level. But Luke never minded cooking. In fact, he enjoyed the comfortable familiarity of combining different tastes and textures into something that was not only practical but creative in nature.

Plus, he was good at it. Always had been.

"And she's smart, too," TJ interjected, adding to Liz's comment regarding April. After their dinner together, the couple had instantly fallen in love with the girl and insisted she come over any time they invited Luke.

"I know," Liz agreed, her voice wistful and longing as she rubbed her pregnant belly. "I hope this one is smart like that."

"Jess is smart," Luke pointed out. He had actually always wondered if Jess's sublimated brilliance was a product of his Danes' genes or simple luck. He certainly hadn't gotten it from his dead-beat father.

"Oh, I talked to him on the phone earlier. He called to wish us a happy Thanksgiving. Isn't that sweet?" she asked, her eyes brimming with tears.

"Jess is a good kid," he agreed.

Considering that Liz's hormones had been running amok of her emotions for the past several months, Luke felt certain she would have thought it was 'sweet' that the post office delivered their bills directly to their mailbox.

"Hey, Luke. What do you think we should name it if it's a girl?" TJ asked. "We've already got a boy's name picked out, but we have no idea what to name it if it's a girl."

"Would you stop calling little him or her an 'it'?" Liz asked in annoyance, her tears forgotten. "Besides, we don't need a girl's name. He's going to be a boy."

Luke cocked his head to the side in curiosity. "Oh, is that what the doctors said?"

But she shook her head. "No, I just know. Women know these things."

"You thought Jess was going to be twins," he said, bemused at her certainty.

"That was only because he was so big! I swear, I felt like I was carrying around a fifty-pound bowling ball strapped to my stomach." Then her eyes went wide in horror as the realization came to her that she was pregnant once again. "God, I hope I don't get that big this time!"

Despite her words, Luke could tell she loved being pregnant. He had never understood the whole concept of a pregnant woman 'glowing,' but seeing her embrace her newfound maternity, he felt as though he was beginning to see it.

"What do you think of the name Trish?" TJ asked.

"Um... that's very... modern," Luke attempted, hoping to disguise his dislike of the name.

"Kayla?" he threw out.

"We're not naming her Kayla," Liz immediately contradicted him before turning back to her brother. "What do you think of 'Monica'?"

"Well-"

"I told you, that name makes me think of the president, and I don't want to be thinking of the president _like that _every time I say my kid's name," TJ ranted.

Luke grimaced as the reference registered, but Liz was quicker to reply, saying, "And I already told you the name Kayla reminds me of the character from _Days of Our Lives_, and I don't want our daughter to be followed around by soap opera bad karma."

Not a fan of soap operas or any show not featuring things blowing up, TJ rolled his eyes. But his irritation slipped away as another possibility occurred to him. "Wait, I know. We should name her Lorelai. That's a good name."

The mention of her name would have struck Luke with more force if he had not already been thinking about her. Liz's talk of pregnancy and name picking had reminded him of what he missed with April. That subject in turn remind him of the previous night's fight with Lorelai and what he would now miss out on with her. Ever since TJ had speculated on how Lorelai would be if she got pregnant, the image had stuck in Luke's mind like a song that just repeats over and over.

Lorelai pregnant. The trouble was, he could see it all too clearly, and the thought made him feel almost overwhelmed by regret. That was something he would miss now as well, having a kid with Lorelai. Mourning sickness, midnight cravings, crazy mood swings, swollen ankles. Even the increased libido that TJ had alluded to so crassly. And Luke had a feeling that if he could observe Liz glowing, Lorelai would very nearly burst with the radiance of motherhood.

"We can't name her Lorelai," he heard his sister state.

"Why not?" TJ demanded. "I like the name. You like the name. Luke obviously likes the name."

"We can't name our daughter after Luke's ex-girlfriend," Liz exclaimed. "How do you think that would make him feel?"

Shrugging with obvious confusion, TJ said, "He'd feel that we like his ex-girlfriend's name. It's just a name."

"You two do realize that I'm sitting right here, don't you?" Luke reminded them.

"You don't mind, do you buddy?" TJ asked.

Before he could answer, Liz tried to confirm her own opinion by asking, "That would be really weird for you, wouldn't it? Sort of a constant reminder?" When Luke did not respond immediately, she said, "See? I thought so. We're not naming the kid Lorelai, and that's final."

"It's fine," Luke attempted, although he knew he did not sound very convincing. "Really." It wasn't as though he didn't already have plenty of constant reminders.

"It's really too bad you two broke up," TJ said. "If the two of you had had a baby, your kid could have played with our kid. Instant playmates! Hey, when they grew up they could have even gotten married. Wouldn't that be cool?"

Luke's eyes went wide in astonishment at the comment. "Um, TJ... that would make them first cousins. Not only is that illegal, but it's disgusting."

"Oh yeah..." TJ nodded in thought as he remembered the family connection.

Thankfully, the conversation ended there as Luke stood up to clear the table. He knew his brother-in-law was well intentioned, but TJ's words had brought up a difficult issue for him.

He and Lorelai should be having a kid together, if not at the same time as Liz, then sometime down the road. It was not only an idea that he had considered, but one that he had gotten used to as a Definite Possibility. Maybe even a probability, considering Lorelai's response when he brought it up the night of their engagement.

As much as Luke loved April, a part of him always felt that if he did have kids, they would be with Lorelai. He had said as much years ago at that stupid dance marathon. With the right person, he could consider having kids. With the right person, he could consider marriage. And he had truly thought Lorelai was the right person for him, the one he wanted to grow old and die with. The one he wanted lying next to him in bed every night and annoying him with her coffee breath and music addiction.

It killed him to think she had found that with someone else, with Christopher, the man who had walked out on her before and torn out her heart. The man who had taken little part in Rory's life throughout most of her childhood. The man who had been the instrument of his first break-up with Lorelai. The man she had gone to after Luke refused to elope with her. The man she slept with just hours after saying she loved _him _for the first time. The man she had begun a relationship with so soon after the official end of their engagement.

When they ran into each other in the grocery store, Luke had told Lorelai she belonged with someone like Christopher. The ache in his chest seemed to lessen when he repeated that to himself, but it had felt strange to say it out loud. It was a lie, one he embraced just to make the pain go away. But try as he might, he could not force himself to believe it, to completely discount a ten-year friendship and two-year relationship with the only woman he had ever considered _the one_.

And just as suddenly as the all-encompassing anger had set upon him ever since hearing Lorelai's confession on her front lawn, it fell away. The crust of icy hurt that had gripped Luke so completely for the past months melted away, leaving behind it the raw realization that no matter who was to blame or who had hurt who more, he had lost her. One moment he had her so completely that she was begging him to marry her, and the next she was gone. Gone from his diner, gone from his bed, gone from life.

But not gone from his heart. Luke suspected that she never would be.

* * *

By the time Lorelai arrived home from dinner at the Gilmores that night, it was very late. Christopher had done his best to convince her to stay the night with him, but she had refused, saying she did not want Paul Anka to spend the night alone on a holiday. In truth, she just wanted to go home, sleep in her own bed, and ignore all the things that were bothering her. 

However, as she pulled up in front of her garage and turned off the car, she noticed that something felt different about her house. She walked carefully towards the front porch, looking around nervously as she did so. The hairs that prickled on the back of her neck told her someone had been there recently, but she could not tell if that person was still around. Then Lorelai saw something on the porch sitting at the edge of the top step, right in line with her front doorway.

A little paper turkey.

Reaching down to pick up the decoration, Lorelai recognized it as one of the paper turkeys Taylor had used to decorate the town square. However, taped to the bottom of it was a small card in a plain white envelope. Her curiosity piqued, she sat down on the step and opened the envelope.

She recognized Luke's handwriting immediately, the bold strokes as familiar to her as her own. The note itself was brief, just a few words followed by his name, but it's meaning hit her so hard that she felt slightly breathless.

_Lorelai,_

_I'm sorry for everything. I really do want you to be happy. It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. _

_Love always, Luke_

She re-read the card a minimum of thirty times before falling asleep that night.


	6. Much Ado About Nothing

**A/N: **Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has reviewed. Never thought I'd say this, but sometimes they really are better than chocolate. As for the show, I know a lot of people are very frustrated right now, myself included. Part of the reason I started this story was to try and prove, at least to myself, that no matter how bad it gets between L/L, they can still always find a way back to each other, even if it takes some time.

* * *

**Chapter 6: Much Ado About Nothing**

"Seriously, I'm stumped," Lorelai complained. "I don't know what to get him."

"Then don't get him anything," Rory suggested. Because it was her last day before leaving for London, the two of them had decided to go into town to watch the Holiday procession.

"I can't _not _get him something. It's Christmas! What kind of person would I be if I didn't get him a present for Christmas?"

"Mom, seriously, it's not that big a deal. He won't know the difference anyway."

Lorelai shook her head in disagreement. "Of course he'll know the difference. Paul Anka is very sensitive to these kinds of things. He'll know it's Christmas and he'll know I didn't get him a gift. And then he'll think I love you more."

Rory frowned, stating, "You do love me more."

But her mother simply smiled at her the way she would appease a small child. "Aw honey, you know I don't play favorites."

"How can you be having trouble buying something for a dog? He already has tons of stuff."

"Exactly!" Lorelai agreed. "He has everything. There's nothing left to get him. Plus, he's going through a phase now where he hates new things. Anything I bring home from the store, he barks at it. Well, except dog food."

"That's understandable," Rory said. "Hey, do you want to get some coffee?" She motioned across the square to Luke's. Lorelai hesitated before answering.

Three weeks had passed since Thanksgiving. Three long, confusing weeks of her trying desperately to return to some measure or normalcy. Having accepted Luke's note of apology, Lorelai continued her occasional stops into the diner, although she did so with renewed caution, always careful to make certain April was not inside before she entered. Little was said about their fight at the Dragonfly. Luke simply pretended nothing was different between them, or at least nothing different from the quasi-friendly customer/diner owner relationship they had slipped into.

Lorelai felt frustrated by the whole thing. For the first time, they had truly let each other know how they felt about everything – April, Christopher, the break-up, and the entire mess in between. Granted, a shouting match in her office would not have been her preferred venue, but at least everything was out in the open. Unfortunately, 'out in the open' did not necessarily mean 'dealt with.' After all, nothing had changed, really. She was still dating Christopher. And she doubted Luke would ever be truly okay with that.

"Um, why don't we go to Weston's?" Lorelai suggested. "We can get cake with our coffee, and I'm feeling a craving for chocolate cake right now."

Rory agreed without argument, knowing how hard her mother was trying to peacefully co-exist in the same town as her ex-fiance. While she had never heard the specifics of Lorelai's fight with Luke, she knew that it had cut her deeply. And while they had succeeded in making up somehow, at least enough to see each other in town, Rory suspected that it was only the first step in something larger. To paraphrase a poet she could not remember, her mom and Luke were always either moving away from each other or toward each other. For them, there was no other direction.

"So, what are you going to do while I'm gone?" she asked as they sat down with their drinks and two slices of cake. She felt concerned about her mother's plans with her out of the country for Christmas since it would be their first one apart.

Lorelai considered it for a second before answering, "Well, I thought I'd put on some music, strip down to my underwear, and dance around the house singing _Old Time Rock & Roll_." Rory rolled her eyes and just stared at her expectantly. "Okay, fine. Well, your grandparents are out of town until January, so I'll probably just celebrate with Chris and Gigi."

Rory nodded, having already figured as much. She knew her parents had been doing well together, probably their most stable period of time as a couple since before she was born. But at the same time, while she knew how happy and excited Christopher was about the relationship, she was not so sure about her mom's feelings on the subject.

She began, "Um... I don't know if I should tell you this or not..."

"Tell me what?" Lorelai asked.

"Well... a couple of days ago I had lunch with dad. And, at one point, he put on his jacket and a box fell out." She paused. "It was a ring box, Mom."

It took a few seconds for the full import of her words to sink in with Lorelai, but when they did she just said, "Oh..."

"I feel weird telling you this. I mean, he asked me not to say anything, but I thought that was something you should know. So you're not totally surprised if he, you know..."

"Yeah," her mother answered quickly, schooling her features to a new degree of unreadability. Rory was not certain if she looked excited, nervous, or completely untouched by the news that Christopher was planning on asking her to marry him. But before she could inquire further, Lorelai said, "Hey, the procession's starting. We should head on out there."

Luckily, whatever dampening effect her revelation may have had on the evening was quickly forgotten as they lost themselves in small town holiday spirit. It occurred to Rory that one of her earliest memories was of being carried through the snow by her mother to watch the yearly procession. She had lost one of her shoes on the walk over from the inn, but fearful of missing the excitement, she had not let her mother walk home for another pair. In the end, Lorelai had simply carried her four-year-old daughter the whole night, then taken them back to drink hot chocolate in the inn's kitchen with Sookie.

"Maybe I shouldn't go to London," Rory said afterward as the crowd began to disburse.

"What? Of course you should go. You've been waiting to see Logan for months, and you want to see London during the Christmas season, right?"

"Yeah, but I don't want to leave you here by yourself."

Lorelai put on her best expression of parental confidence and said, "I'll be fine. I'm a big girl now, and I promise not to throw any wild parties. Besides, I won't be by myself."

"Lorelai! Rory!"

The voice that reached them from half-way across the square had both turning even as they recognized the source: April Nardini.

Indeed, the girl waved to get their attention even as she walked closer, and her father trailed after her. But surprisingly, Luke neither looked uncomfortable nor hesitant as he nodded a greeting to both Rory and Lorelai in turn.

"Did you come out to see the procession?" April asked them in her usual rapid-fire manner. "Luke said they do it every year so they have plenty of time to practice, but I still thought it was really cool. They never do anything fun like this in Woodbridge. Sure, we have a carnival in the summer, but nothing really for the holidays. That's one of the things I love about Star's Hollow – you have all this fun town stuff going on. Luke even said he'd take me to one of the town meetings sometime."

"Town meetings are very entertaining," Rory said, then advised, "and be sure to bring popcorn."

Lorelai held herself back from commenting, not really sure what to do or say under the circumstances. So far, every encounter with April had heralded some sort of person disaster for her, beginning with their first meeting, then the aftermath of April's otherwise fabulous birthday party, and finally the birthday conversation at Luke's. Considering his response to that last occasion, she felt justified in her reticence.

But even as the two girls began talking about the pro's and con's of small town life, Lorelai looked up to see Luke watching her, his expression soft and affectionate. He was not irritated by her being in the company of his daughter. Instead, he seemed to assure her of the opposite with his silent gaze. The blue eyes she had so often lost herself in reflected an apology, as obvious and regretful as the note he had left her on Thanksgiving.

She could tell that he was about to speak – he was shifting uncomfortably the way he often did when working up to something – when they were interrupted by April.

"Dad, can we go to the diner for hot chocolate? Rory said she's been craving hot chocolate and that sounds really good right now to me, too."

"Um, sure," he answered immediately. "I also have some pie, if you're hungry."

He addressed the last part to Rory, who immediately began to protest that she did not want to intrude. But Luke waved off her concern and April had her steered in the direction of the diner before she could say another word.

These events left Lorelai once again feeling uncertain and apprehensive about her presence in the situation. She took a step back before saying tentatively, "Well, I should get home to Paul Anka..."

"Aren't you coming with us?" April asked, clearly upset about the possibility of her not.

Rory added hopefully, "Come on, Mom. Paul Anka's fine by himself."

Lorelai carefully looked in Luke's direction, more to gage his reaction than seek his permission, but the result ended up being the same. He seemed... content with the idea, pleased almost with the possibility of her joining them.

He confirmed this by quietly telling her, "Please come, have some coffee and pie." Noticing the girls watching him intently, he added in a more off-handed tone, "You haven't been by the diner much lately, and I'm sure Lane would love to see you."

Rory and April exchanged amused looks before falling into a conversation about the merits of Yale versus Harvard, deliberately excluding their parents as they walked towards _Luke's_.

Once inside the diner, Luke went to fetch hot chocolate, coffee, and pie, allowing Lane to go visit with the girls. Although only in the sixth month of her pregnancy, her slight frame made her look much farther along. As much as Luke knew her condition made working such long hours difficult, he also knew she and Zach needed the money. Generally, he let her work as much as she wanted and gave her as many breaks as he could.

But after chatting with the girls for a little while, Lane got up to return to her duties behind the counter. It was a relatively light evening with only a few customers so mostly she had been cleaning up in the kitchen and doing dishes. But seeing the slight variation in her step that indicated her back was starting to hurt, Luke told her he could finish closing up and to head on home. She gave him a gracious smile of thanks before getting her coat and saying her goodbyes.

As Luke brought the food and beverages to the table, Lorelai could not help but feel touched by his tenderness towards Lane. For someone who prided himself on maintaining such a tough persona, he truly had a way of being there for everyone around him.

Setting down the cup of coffee and slice of pie in front of her, Luke gave her an indescribable look. It was the kind of look she had been longing for for so long, the kind where he held her eyes with his for a few seconds too long, then looked away almost bashfully. And then, he did the unexpected.

He sat down at the table beside her, ostensibly to join the conversation, but Rory and April had done nothing but talk amongst themselves since Lane had left, leaving Luke to glance at Lorelai expectantly.

"It's good pie, you should try some," he said, his comment startling her into realizing that he had indeed set a piece of heavenly smelling pie in front of her, as well as a steaming cup of coffee.

Taking a bite, Lorelai moaned appreciatively. While she knew that some of his pastries he bought from other sources (usually donuts and cakes), he generally made all his own pies and danishes. "It is," she agreed before taking a sip of coffee. "You sure know how to spoil us."

Luke was about to answer, but April suddenly stood up from the table. "Dad, I'm just going to take Rory up to see my science fair project." While Rory cast her mom a mischievous grin, she followed without a word and within seconds the girls had disappeared upstairs.

"Hey, your hot chocolate's gonna get cold!" Luke called after them, and Lorelai could not help but laugh a little at the earnestness in his voice and how little effect it had on the girls. He glanced at her, and for a moment her heart seized until he let out a chuckle himself.

"Things seem to be going good," Lorelai said.

"Yep, pretty good." He nodded, looking more pleased and comfortable than she had seen him in a long time.

"I heard her call you 'Dad.'"

"Yeah, that's kind of a new thing she started a few weeks ago. We haven't really talked about it or anything. It was just something she started doing." He shrugged it off, but she could see the undeniable pride in his expression.

"That's good. I'm happy for you," she told him. And she truly was. As difficult as April's sudden appearance had made their lives, Lorelai always wanted him to have a relationship with her. She loved seeing him taking on his newfound role of fatherhood, partially because it reminded her of his love for Rory but also because it was something she wanted for him in general – to be a father.

While they had only discussed it a handful of times, and then only briefly, things he had said over the years had gradually led Lorelai to realize that he did want to have kids. It was not necessarily something she had really thought for herself of at first. In fact, the one time she had suspected she was pregnant it had made her crazy with worry. In part, of her reaction was because she suspected Luke would react badly, but she also knew that it was not the right time for them, then. Not that there would be a right time for them anymore, she concluded sadly.

"So, how are things with you?" Luke asked.

"Good. Everything's good. The inn has been really busy. We've had an unusual number of weddings the last few months." Realizing what she had said, and how it may be construed in light of their own failed engagement, Lorelai instantly went quiet. It felt so odd to have to pay close attention to what she said around Luke. For so long, she had been able to tell him anything about her life – the good, the bad, and the mundane. But now, it seemed as though every subject brought up painful memories, every statement could have a double meaning. At any moment, she could say the wrong thing and lose him yet again. She took another bite of pie in hopes that he would take up the conversation.

Luke did just that, commenting, "So I hear Rory's going to London for Christmas. That must be tough for you, first time she's been gone for the holidays."

Lorelai wanted to contradict him, to tell him that she was fine with Rory leaving, that she was perfectly fine on her own. Instead, she heard herself say, "I miss her already. I just keep remembering the first Christmas after we moved into the Crap Shack. It was the first year we had any money to buy real decorations, and we went out and got this big tree and covered it with strings of popcorn and all the old ornaments we'd made and twinkle lights and those little plastic balls that come in different colors." Lorelai sighed. "I guess those years are coming to an end."

"It's just one Christmas," Luke pointed out. "And she'll probably miss you so much this year that every year from now on she'll make it a point to never miss Christmas with you again."

She smiled half-hearted at his attempt to make her feel better. "I guess," she said.

"And you won't be alone, right?" he continued. "You'll still have... people around?"

He was alluding to Christopher and they both knew it. But he asked with such genuine care and interest, that the question did not sound accusatory, merely concerned. He was simply making sure she had someone to be with on Christmas, a holiday she had once delighted in sharing with him. Certainly, their last Christmas he had been distracted and out of sorts, but they had still enjoyed a beautiful family holiday together. And the year before that, when they were first dating and getting to know each other better, it was around Christmas time that Luke had let her see him on his dark day. As well, other years came to mind before they had even become a couple: a slay ride in the snow, a Santa burger, watching the procession from his diner window.

Suddenly, she was reminded of what Rory had said to her regarding Christopher and the ring box in his possession. And it occurred to her that except for his attendance at a few of her parents' Christmas parties, she had no holiday memories of Christopher. Over the years, he would sometimes send Rory gifts, if he remembered or if the spirit moved him, but he had never come to Star's Hollow himself. They had always decorated the tree themselves, just the two of them, except for the past two years with Luke.

"I..." Lorelai paused, knowing he was still staring at her expectantly as he waited for an answer. "I have to go," she told him, standing up quickly. Just like that, she had made the decision.

"Oh, I didn't mean to-" Luke began, but she held up a hand to stop him.

"No, it's not you. Well, not what you said anyway. I just... I have to go do something. Tell Rory I'll see her at home later." She was at the door before he could respond, but before leaving she added, "And thanks for the pie."

* * *

It took three days for the news to reach Miss Patty, mostly because Babette had been out of state with Mory visiting his sister in New Jersey, and she was the most direct link to gossip on that side of town. But as soon as Babette spoke with Lorelai and ferreted out the essential information, Patty took up what she considered to be one of her primary responsibilities: making sure everyone who had an interest in the subject was privy to it. She realized that some would have called her a busy-body (or other unflattering names), but she also knew that when it came to life in Star's Hollow, some things were just expected. Besides, if Lorelai had not wanted her business shared with everyone else, she would not have told Babette. 

Of course, the first place Patty went was Luke's diner, and there she happened upon Lane and April chatting amiably about baby items.

"And you'll need a stroller," the teenager was saying. "They have ones with cup holders, but I think the best kind to get are the ones that you can also use as a car seat."

"But I don't have a car, and neither does Zack," Lane said, growing more and more alarmed. From what April had been telling her, babies sounded very expensive. "We always just borrow my mom's car or Tim's if we need to. Am I going to have to get a car?"

"I think you'll probably be okay mooching off others for a while," the girl assured her. "But you will need a car seat. That's the law."

Miss Patty took this opportunity to join the conversation. "Honey, don't worry about that. I've got all kinds of old baby stuff at my studio that people have left over the years. I'm sure we can find you whatever you need." This news certainly kept Lane from hyperventilating, but the next words out of Patty's mouth did a great deal more to take their minds off of babies. "You know how Lorelai has been dating that man – Rory's father? Well, I just heard that they broke up."

"Really?" April asked, clearly ecstatic.

"That's... poor Lorelai," Lane said, restraining her own emotions on the subject. While most of the inhabitants of Star's Hollow were either firmly in favor or firmly against the 'Luke & Lorelai' match, she just wanted them both to find happiness in whatever form it took. For so many years, Lorelai had been like a mother to her, and seeing her heart broken repeatedly was just awful. But at the same time, Luke was her boss, and she knew how hard he had taken the end of their engagement.

Patty wagged her eyebrows at them meaningfully before revealing, "From what I understand, _she _broke up with _him_."

"Thank God," Lane proclaimed, surprising even herself. She supposed that she had stronger feelings regarding the Luke/Lorelai relationship than she thought.

"Well, I'm off to spread the word," Patty said. "One of you will let Luke know, I assume?"

Unfortunately, Luke was in Litchfield for most of the day, trying to locate a replacement part for one of the burners on the kitchen stove. He did not arrive in Star's Hollow until later that evening, walking in through the back to find April sitting at the diner counter reading an incredible thick book Rory had lent her.

"Well, I would have taken you with me if I knew that was going to take so long," he said as he came in, putting the part on the counter.

"That's okay. Lane let me deliver orders while you were gone," April told him. In truth, she could have gotten a ride home hours before, but had stayed for one purpose. "There's something you should know-"

But Luke's attention had already been caught by something out the front window. She followed his gaze in the direction of the gazebo and saw the figure of a person sitting on the bench. She squinted through her glasses to see who it was, but before she could make them out, Luke said, "It's Lorelai."

"Oh," his daughter said thoughtfully but not sounding surprised.

"Why's she just sitting out there?" he asked.

April shrugged her shoulders, but after a second concluded, "Well, it may be because she and that guy broke up. I forget his name – Rory's dad. But Miss Patty came in earlier and told us. I think she heard it from Babette. Anyway, she said that Lorelai broke up with him, and-"

But Luke was already on his way out the door before she could finish, so she stopped herself, smiling as she watched him walk across the square towards the gazebo.

It reminded her a little of a movie she had once seen.

Lorelai looked up from the place on the floor she had been staring at so intently for the last hour, the spot where they had once kissed. It was unlike her to simply sit out in the cold and stew over something, but all day she had felt the need to get out of her house and find someplace with happy, familiar memories. She had gone to the inn first and had sat on the front porch remembering her and Luke's first kiss until Sookie shooed her home. Then she had gone into her garage and stared at the pink and blue walls, the absence of Luke's boat, and all the things she had emptied her house of in that foolish attempt to escape his memory. And behind all the boxes, looking lonely and lost in the back corner of the garage, she saw the chuppah he had made her.

The chuppah she should have been married under. Not to Max and certainly not to Christopher, but to the man who had carved it with his own two hands. The only man she would ever want to marry.

And, Lorelai suddenly noticed, the man who was walking towards her from the diner. She watched expectantly as he came up and sat down next to her, as if they were just two old friends having a picnic together in the middle of town.

"Hey," he said finally, his voice gentle and unassuming, almost like a hand brushing the hair from the side of her face. It was so wrong, him being there for her, especially after she had hurt him so badly. And yet, even though she had not gone to the gazebo anticipating that he would see her, she knew that if he did, he would come out and check on her. Luke was just that kind of person.

"Hey," she replied.

"So, I heard you and Christopher..."

"We broke up," she supplied. "Well, I broke up with him. Rory told me he was going to propose, and I knew I had to end it." Luke just nodded, but Lorelai gave a little sarcastic laugh before adding, "Seems to be my general M.O. Find a perfectly nice guy and stomp all over his heart."

"That's not true," he said automatically.

"Isn't it?"

"Lorelai..."

"Christopher wanted me. He said he loved me and that he wanted to be with me. And I thought, 'gee, that sounds nice. That's what I want.' It didn't really matter that I didn't love him, at least not like that." She signed deeply. "He knows me. He's known me forever, and he still wanted me, knowing what a complete screw-up I am. I guess I figured, if I couldn't make it work with him, then..." She trailed off, her feelings overtaking her and forcing the tears out from deep inside her.

Luke reached out a hand to touch her arm, but Lorelai pulled away from him.

"No, don't comfort me," she declared, almost angrily, although the emotion seemed directed more at herself than at him. "You don't need to be comforting me. I did the same thing to you. I had something good and I messed it up."

"It wasn't your fault," he told her. She gave him a skeptical, disbelieving look, and he said, "It wasn't _all _your fault. It was my fault, too."

"We just weren't right for each other," she said quietly, echoing the words he had said to her in the supermarket after their break-up. When they had first left Luke's mouth, she felt as though they had physically burned her. The idea that Luke truly felt that way, that they were not right for each other, confirmed all the fears and self doubts that had been festering inside her for months.

In Lorelai's mind, they _were _right for each other. They were perfect for each other. Luke _got _her, in a way no one else ever had. He supported her and stood by her and challenged her without making her feel weak or stupid or trapped. With Luke she had felt treasured, loved, adored. Or at least, she had felt all those things before April entered the picture.

April. Everything always came back to April - and Luke's reaction to his instant fatherhood. Lorelai supposed that it had been a test, really, a test of their relationship. A test they had obviously flunked. He demonstrated that he did not trust her, did not fully want her in his life. And what made that feeling even worse was that it undercut every certainty about Luke she ever had.

For years, she had suspected that he had carried a torch for her – everyone in town said so. And he confirmed that belief when he showed her the horoscope, the proof of his long-suffering, silent affection. Then he made his "all in" speech, and Lorelai felt completely secure in his feelings for her. He loved her – she knew it without him ever saying it. He did not need words; his actions said it in a thousand ways each day. When he made her coffee. When he did her favors around the house and at the inn. When he sat through stupid movies with her that she knew he hated. When he kissed her or touched her or simply put his arms around her.

At first, Lorelai had trusted Luke's feelings more than she had her own. But she truly realized she loved him, completely and without reservation, the night she had proposed. Standing before her, ranting like a lunatic about kidnapping Rory and taking her back to Yale, was this man who had always been there for her, had always loved her, and would never let her down. And she knew, right then, he was the one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

But somehow, amid the uncertainty with April, they had lost that. She had lost it, that feeling, that certainty of Luke's love for her. And by the time she had drug him into the street in one last, desperate attempt to reclaim it, she understood the problem. He did not want to marry her. He did not trust her. He did not need her, at least not the way she needed him.

"Hey, you okay?" he inquired softly. Lorelai was pulled from her memories as she focused on the man sitting on the bench beside her. Less than two feet separated them, and yet they were so very far apart.

"Do you really believe that?" she asked.

Confusion clouded Luke's face. "Believe what?"

"That we weren't right for each other. I mean, you don't have to answer if you don't want to. But you said it when we broke up, that we just weren't right for each other. Did you mean that? Or did you say it because you were upset?"

"Lorelai, where is this coming from?"

_Where indeed._

"Never mind. I just... never mind." She stood up, intent on walking home before she continued to make a spectacle of herself in public. "Thanks for checking on me..."

She turned to leave, but Luke put a hand on her shoulder, forcing her to stop. "Are you sure you're okay?" he asked again. Lorelai gave him a sad smile, touched at his concern. Despite all their history (or perhaps because of it), he still worried about her.

"I should never have walked away from you that night," she said.

Luke nodded, having been haunted by the ghosts of his own regrets on the subject of _that night_. He gestured to the diner. "Do you want to come in, have some coffee...?" he began to ask, but Lorelai was already shaking her head.

"Not tonight," she said. "But thanks for the offer."

"Will I see you tomorrow?"

It was not the question he wanted to ask, but it would do. As much as he wanted to sweep Lorelai into his arms and kiss her pain away, there was still too much left between them. And while an eventual reconciliation seemed more possible now than it ever had before, it was not certain. Their words and actions had brought up so much hurt and anger, Luke was not sure the damage could ever be repaired, or even if they wanted to try.

And yet, it felt wrong not having Lorelai in his life, even if it was just to pour her coffee in the morning.

"I'll be there," she promised, giving him a hopeful smile.

TBC


	7. Sense & Sensibility

**Chapter 7: Sense and Sensibility**

Lorelai did not spend Christmas by herself. Instead, as she sat in the lobby of the Dragonfly decorated with candles and lights and a beautiful Christmas tree, surrounded by guests who decided they wanted to celebrate the holidays New England-style, she could not have been further from alone. As well, Sookie and Jackson were there with the kids, Davie delighting in getting under foot and Martha sneaking treats when no one was looking. Even Michel came to the inn claiming that whatever vague plans he previously made had mysteriously fallen through.

Between the music, the food, and the general Christmas Eve festivities, Lorelai could almost find herself distracted from missing Rory. Almost.

Despite being absorbed in the holiday happenings, she did notice when a certain individual peeked his head in the front door. Luke was dressed nicely in a dark gray shirt and the black jacket she had bought him so many years before. Lorelai was immediately reminded that no matter how much she liked seeing him in his usual flannel and baseball cap combo, 'GQ Luke' was a delicious treat.

"Hey!" she said, walking over to him. "You made it."

"Yeah, well..." He glanced around the inn lobby, taking in all the activity. "I just thought I'd stop in, say hello. I can't stay long... supposed to go over and see April."

"I'm glad you came," Lorelai said sincerely, allowing herself a moment to enjoy just being in his company. She had invited him to the Christmas Eve gathering figuring he already had plans, mostly because she wanted him to know he was welcome. With so much going on at the inn, Lorelai had barely had time to pop into the diner, let alone have a full-fledged conversation with him since their encounter at the gazebo. But the few times she had seen him, Lorelai thought there was something in his eyes and the way he looked at her, a familiar feeling she had long-since feared was gone.

"Um, so I got you a gift," Luke said, his hand automatically going to his pocket. The box he pulled out was small and black, like a jewelry box. Lorelai's heart automatically jumped when she saw it. "Sorry it's not wrapped," he apologized.

"Thank you, that's so sweet," she told him, honestly not having expected him to get her a gift at all. Taking a quick breath, she opened the lid to reveal a delicately crafted pewter and glass dragonfly on a silver chain. "It's beautiful..."

"Well, I saw it and thought of you," he said, ducking his head a bit in embarrassment. One thing that had always weighed on him was how much Lorelai had adored the necklace he had given her that Valentine's day at the Vineyard, the one Logan had actually bought for Rory. While he had never confessed the necklace's intended recipient, seeing her wear it had served as a constant reminder of his romantic shortcomings.

But this gift Luke had picked out himself. Well, April had been with him at the time and had offered her input, but he had been the ultimate decision-maker. It just so happened that his daughter's highest level of approval coincided with that particular necklace.

Lorelai wasted no time in taking it out of the box and moving to fasten it around her neck. Seeing her struggle with the clasp, Luke held out a hand and asked, "Can I help with that?"

She met his gaze and gave him a shy smile before surrendering the necklace and turning away from him. His fingers lightly brushed her shoulders as he brought the chain around her neck and secured the clasp in the back. When he was done, she carefully removed her hair so that the necklace could settle against her throat and then turned back to face him.

It was a ritual they had gone through on only a few occasions, when they got dressed together for some event or when Lorelai was feeling particularly seductive. At the same time, she would usually ask him to zip up the back of her dress, and he in turn would ask her to do his tie or smooth the collar on his shirt. They were small gestures, little intimacies she had gotten used to when living with a man for the first time. She could tell that he remembered them as well.

"Well, so... I got you something, too," Lorelai stammered, remembering that she had brought her gift for him on the off-chance that he came to the party. She quickly retrieved the present from under the Christmas tree, spotting Davie shaking various boxes as she did so. As she handed the gift to Luke, she smiled and said, "Merry Christmas."

Their hands touched briefly as he took the box from her, and she tried to ignore the feelings that simple contact ignited inside of her. It had been so long since they had simply touched, and she had to fight back the urge to throw her arms around him.

The gift to him was slightly less personal, mostly because Lorelai had felt odd buying him anything at all considering the fragile state of their friendship. She did not want to give him clothing, although she had found a number of shirts that would have suited him perfectly. She considered fishing and camping items but ruled against them. A book might have been just the right blend of friendly and , but considering how many of the books she had gotten him in the past sat in her garage, unread, she abandoned that notion. In the end, she retreated to an old stand-by and simply got him something she knew that he would like, hoping he would not read any unintended meaning into it.

"The _Planet of the Apes_ DVD box set..." Luke said, chuckling as he read the title.

"I figured that's something you might enjoy. They're definitely not chick flicks," she said with confidence. "And the original is so much better than the remake. I love Mark Wahlberg, don't get me wrong, but that movie just belongs to Charlton Heston."

Luke smiled at her, glad they had slipped back into an easy sort of exchange. When he was with Lorelai, he could not help but feel lighter and more relaxed, and yet, at the same time, she drove him absolutely crazy. Ever since the first day she walked into the diner and demanded coffee, she had been turning his world on it's ear, challenging every long-held belief he had ever held. Marriage, children, relationships, family, even business. It wasn't necessarily that she changed how he reacted or dealt with things, but rather that she made him see everything in a whole new light.

When faced with the prospect of waking up next to her every morning, marriage did not seem as intimidating as it had when he had been dating Rachel. Even the idea of having a baby, once so daunting when he was with Anna, filled him with a sense of excited anticipation when he considered that any child they had together would have Lorelai as a mother. And she was a great mother, a great person in general. Whenever he messed up or got lost in himself, she was always there to pick up the slack, like on his dark day when she saved his dad's boat. So Luke knew, if he was not the best father or husband in the world, he could count on her to be there and keep him from screwing everything up.

And yet, when he found out about April, all he wanted to do was keep her out of the picture. Luke realized that this girl – his daughter – was something he had to figure out on his own. He did not want Lorelai to rescue him from a situation of his own creation, even though he knew she would be fantastic at it. She could have easily won over April and bonded Luke with his daughter with one swipe of her magic 'Mom wand,' but that was not what he wanted. He had wanted, needed to show her he could be a father all on his own. He needed to prove it to himself.

But somehow, it had all gotten turned around and he had lost her in the process. It made him wonder if perhaps he never should have had her to begin with.

"Um... well, I guess I should get going," he said.

Lorelai's disappointment was obvious as she followed him to the front door. "Are you sure you can't stay a little longer? Sookie's made all kinds of food. I'm sure if we look hard enough we can find something that's _somewhat _healthy..."

"I would, but... Anna's cooking this whole big thing, and April invited me over, so..." He shrugged regretfully.

"Well, wish April a Merry Christmas for me," she said softly.

"I will."

They stood for a moment just looking at each other, each having so much to say and yet neither being able to express it. They had come so far from being just the grumpy diner owner and his coffee junkie customer, and yet, the prospect of beginning their romantic relationship all over again was frightening.

"Mistletoe!"

Luke and Lorelai glanced down to see little Davie standing near them and pointing at the ceiling above their heads. Indeed, a sprig of the romantic holiday plant was suspended right above the front door. Lorelai looked at Luke, and then back at Sookie's son who stood watching them expectantly.

"Michel must have put that up. We don't... it's probably just cilantro-" was as far as she got before Luke silenced her, putting his mouth to hers in a chaste yet decidedly passionate kiss. As his lips delicately caressed hers, Lorelai's hand went to his cheek automatically. But within an instant, it was over and he was stepping back from her.

"Merry Christmas, Lorelai," he said softly before turning to leave.

"Merry Christmas," she echoed.

* * *

On Christmas morning, Lorelai was called to the inn with an emergency: the heat had gone out. And there was not a repair place within three counties willing to come out and fix it on Christmas day. Luckily, Lorelai still had Tom's cell phone number, and through him she was able to track someone open for emergencies. After receiving word that the repairman was on his way, she made a general announcement to the guests who had assembled around the fire in the main lobby in an effort to stay warm. She also made another apology and refunded half the price of their rooms before inviting them all to share in the breakfast Sookie had come in to whip up. 

Afterwards, as the two inn owners stood at the desk together lamenting their bad luck, Lorelai said, "I'm sorry you had to come out here on Christmas morning. Why don't you go back home and be with Jackson and the kids?"

Sookie shrugged dismissively then leaned in as though to tell a secret. "Actually, I don't mind the break _at all_. Davie got us up at five o'clock this morning to open presents, and then Martha woke up, so none of us could go back to sleep. By six o'clock the living room was buried in wrapping paper and the kids were playing with their toys. Loud toys. I don't know what Jackson was thinking, buying the kids things that make noise. We should have gotten them books and puzzles. I'm telling you, when you got Rory, you were blessed."

Lorelai smiled at the memories of her own Christmas mornings with Rory – complete with books and puzzles. "I was," she agreed. "Except when they go to college, those books weigh a _ton_."

"But I suppose I should get back. Hey, do you want to come spend the day with us? Jackson's family is coming over later, but I'm sure you can escape before then."

"That's okay," Lorelai said. "I think I'll just stay here and make sure everyone's comfortable until the heat gets fixed."

"Well call me if you need anything," her friend stated firmly.

But just as Sookie was leaving, one of the guests approached Lorelai, a tall man she seemed to remember being in Hartford on some sort of business trip. They had met the night before at the party, and he stuck in her mind because he was traveling alone and had chosen to stay at the inn precisely because of their holiday festivities.

"Great job handling the heating crisis," he said amiably. "Two years ago I had a plumbing emergency and I had to call everyone in the book to get someone to come out."

"Well, that's one of the benefits of living in a small town," Lorelai said. She had actually almost considered calling Luke, but in the end decided not to because she did not want to spoil his day with April.

"Yes, I'm definitely beginning to understand the concept of small town charm," the man said warmly, almost flirtatiously. After making more small talk, he reintroduced himself as Elliot Chandler and invited her to have breakfast with him. They sat and talked through the morning with Lorelai focusing mostly on her experiences at the inn and raising Rory in Star's Hollow. Elliot revealed that while he was a resident of New York, he had a young son from a previous marriage who lived with his ex-wife in Seattle. Because he was only able to see the boy every other year at Christmas, every "off-year" he chose to travel for business to keep his mind off it.

As they spoke, Lorelai could not help but find herself attracted to this man. He was good looking, smart, articulate, well-dressed, and he obviously loved his son. And yet, in so many respects, he was just like so many of the other men she had dated. Elliot's sense of humor was frequently dry and self-deprecating the way Jason's had been. His style of dress and overall educational background closely paralleled those of Max. And the easy way he slipped into light conversation reminded her overwhelmingly of Christopher. However, the one man he did not bring to mind was Luke Danes, except perhaps in his obvious devotion to his son.

As they finished breakfast and Lorelai got up to go check on the heating repairman, Elliot startled her by saying, "Maybe we could do this again sometime. You know, when it's not Christmas and there aren't icicles hanging off the ends of our noses."

"Um..." she began, not sure how to disappoint his hopeful expression. Finally, she just decided to be truthful. "I appreciate the offer and you're a really nice guy..."

"But?" he asked, sensing her hesitation.

"To be completely honest, I just recently got out of relationship with someone. And... I'm just not ready to start dating again."

He nodded his understanding and they parted amicably, but Lorelai stayed in Elliot's thoughts long after she left the room.

"So, Luke, are you coming to my New Year's Eve party?" Miss Patty asked saucily, sitting with Babette at the diner two days later. "I'm making my famous punch."

"When have you ever seen me come to one of your parties?" Luke replied, even as he worked the cash register and distributed change to one of his customers. The town's twin gossips had, characteristically enough, chosen the busiest part of the morning to harass him about whatever came to mind.

"You went to the party last year," Babette pointed out immediately. "Lorelai made you go, remember?"

"I remember," Luke sighed. Ever since she had broken up with Christopher, everyone in town had been dropping veiled hints about them getting back together. Kirk had even gone so far as to start a betting pool as to the exact date of the reconciliation. And try as he might, no one would believe him when he said they were just friends, that they had tried the relationship thing, but it just hadn't worked out for them.

"You know, if you want to make Lorelai jealous, I know a single mother who's daughter is in one of my classes," Patty said, her voice dripping with insinuation. "I'm sure she'd love to ring in the new year with you."

"I have no desire to make Lorelai jealous, and I can get my own dates, thank you very much," he responded with annoyance.

"Suga', you haven't dated anyone since you two broke up," Babette interjected helpfully. "If you're not going to get back together, you should put yourself out there."

Patty added, "And if you decide to get back together later on, say around _March 3rd_, you can always have a little fun in the mean time."

"No, it should be on Valentine's day," the other woman advised him. "February 14th! Can't wait too long. Lorelai isn't going to stay single forever. We all know she doesn't waste any time between boyfriends."

He could feel his anger at the intrusion in his personal life growing exponentially with every passing minute. Sometimes living in Star's Hollow really did equate to living in a fish bowl, and for someone as attached to his privacy as Luke was, even friendly needling from the local gossips felt like unwanted interference.

"Look," he said. "Who I date and who Lorelai dates is no one's business. And if Lorelai finds someone who can make her happy, good for her. No one deserves it more. But she and I are just friends."

Thankfully, a tourist entered at that moment and he was able to escape the conversation by taking the man's order at the counter. "Coffee, french toast, and sausage," he read back. "Anything else?"

"Actually, I know this is going to sound strange, but do you know the woman who owns the Dragonfly?" Elliot Chandler asked. He had just finished his meeting in Hartford and was on his way back to the inn to check out. While part of him had recognized the truth in Lorelai's statements about not being ready to date, he was also curious to see if her small town had any contrary thoughts that might give him hope.

Luke was instantly on guard. "Yeah, why do you want to know?"

"Well, I asked her out yesterday and she turned me down, said she had just broken up with someone. And I was just wondering if that was just a brush off line she tells everyone or if maybe I had some chance with her..."

It was at that moment that Luke reached his breaking point. Pointing at Babette and Patty, he said hotly, "They put you up to this, didn't they?"

He ignored the confusion on the man's face and interrupted him as he started to say, "Uh... no, I just-"

"Listen up, I have a general announcement!" Luke called out to the whole diner. "Lorelai and I are _just friends_. We're not dating. We're not engaged. And no one is going to get us back together just to win some bet that Kirk has going on. And if any of you ever try something like this again-" He pointed to Elliot, "-I'm banning you from the diner. Permanently!"

With that, he turned and went into the kitchen, leaving everyone to stare after him in curiosity.

Babette stood up and placed a sympathetic hand on Elliot's shoulder. "Suga', you have about as good a chance with Lorelai Gilmore as you do with that Angelina Jolie-gal. Give up and go home. Those two are meant for each other."

* * *

To get her mind off of Rory's absence and the resulting holiday loneliness, Lorelai decided to do the one thing that usually tended to boost her spirits. She went shopping. 

Either fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how one viewed her circumstances, Lorelai ended up in a sea of sale-seekers and bargain-hunters, as well as a number of simple gift-returners. It was precisely the kind of situation Rory would have enjoyed mocking with her, had she been there. And on the other side of the coin, she could almost hear Luke going into a well-deserved "mall rant" indicting commercialism as the root of all evil.

And then, she did hear precisely that. Except, the mini Luke-rant that came to her ears was spoken by someone else.

"We spend way too much money on _stuff_. What does everyone need with all this stuff, anyway? It just sits around gathering dust, and then we have to clean it and move it around and clean it again. And after a few years we run out of room, so we have to get rid of it, either by throwing it away or by giving it to people who don't have enough stuff. It's materialism run amock."

"You've been spending way too much time with Luke," Anna Nardini concluded, although she grinned at her daughter in amusement.

For her part, Lorelai only had a moment of time to register the mother and daughter walking towards her before April spotted her. "Lorelai!" she shouted, rushing over to her.

"Hey. How are you?" she greeted the girl politely.

"I'm okay. I had a headache earlier, but I think that was from eating ice cream too fast. Why I ordered ice cream in the middle of December, I don't know, but it sounded really good at the time. What about you? How was your Christmas?"

"My Christmas was good," Lorelai said, ignoring Anna's unfriendly stance and icy stare. "How about yours? Did you get everything on your list?"

"Well, I didn't really have a list this year," April replied thoughtfully. "That always seemed kind of presumptuous, to just make a list. But I did get everything I wanted. Well, almost everything. There's still one or two things I was hoping for that haven't happened yet, but I'm working on them."

"That's good," Lorelai said, although she was far too distracted by Anna to give the girl's rambling words much thought. "I guess I should let you and your mom get back to shopping," she offered with a timid smile to April's mother.

"Thanks," Anna said, flashing her own fake smile in response. "We've still got a lot to do."

"Okay, well, tell Rory I'm almost done with her book," April said. "I'll leave it at Luke's and he can give it to you the next time you come to the diner, if I don't see you before that. Hey, maybe sometime you, me, Rory, and Luke can go do something again, like go bowling or get something to eat. Well, somewhere besides diner, which - don't get me wrong, I love the diner – but maybe somewhere different, you know?"

A subtle mixture of emotions crossed Anna's face in that moment, including surprise, jealousy, and carefully controlled anger. Her expression was not lost on Lorelai.

"Um... I think that's something you should talk over with your parents first," she advised April cautiously.

"Oh, I don't think Luke will mind. He really likes it when you come to the diner," the teenage girl said, dropping her voice to a lower octave just to make the insinuation clear.

"Well, let's just see how it goes," Lorelai said, growing ever more fearful of the twitch that had developed at the corner of Anna's mouth. She had no wish to get Luke in trouble with his daughter's mother again, or to get herself in trouble, for that matter. "It was nice running to you," she concluded, being sure to give Anna a friendly nod as well before continuing on her way.

Anna and April were not even out of earshot yet before the girl's mother began grilling her about how much time she had been spending with Luke's ex-fiance.

* * *

"What about her?" 

"No."

"You're right. She doesn't look like your type. Her?"

"Patty, I already said it about five times. _No_."

"Oh, come on, you didn't even look."

She held up the picture once again for Luke's inspection, a small pile of discarded photos already littering the diner table. With the Christmas season over and most of her students on their way back to school, Miss Patty had started a project with the intent of not only entertaining herself but hopefully improving the lives of everyone else in town. She wanted to get Luke a date.

Ideally, she preferred him dating Lorelai, but there was still plenty of time for that. And the poor man needed some female companionship beyond that daughter of his.

"Patty, I'm not doing this with you," Luke said warningly.

"Well of course you're not," she returned flirtatiously. "If you were, we wouldn't need all these pictures, would we?"

"Jeez..." he muttered, walking away.

Miss Patty had been bugging him every day since Christmas about finding a date for her New Year's Eve party. No matter how many times he explained to her he had no interest in dating anyone or attending her little soirée, she just redoubled her efforts. She pointed out women on the street, brought in pictures of women she thought he might like, and she even threatened to bring in the women themselves.

"Wow, you sure know a lot of single women," he had told her at one point. "I think you missed your true calling."

"As a matchmaker?" she had asked.

"As a brothel owner."

Unfortunately, his comment had only made her laugh and wink at him saucily. It occurred to Luke that almost nothing was going to deter Patty from this dating venture she had set her mind on, which was odd considering he knew she had money in Kirk's "Luke/Lorelai Make Up" pool.

But his mind was taken off those issues when he noticed Anna walk through the front door of the diner. She was alone and she looked angry, just like the day she had found out Lorelai had helped him with April's birthday party. Except this time, she did not take him upstairs to yell at him but rather started almost the moment she walked into the room.

"Do you have any idea what you're subjecting my daughter to?" she demanded.

Luke was completely confused as he asked, "Anna, what are you talking about?"

"I'm her _mother_. You can't just completely ignore what I say!" she continued to rant. "If I say I don't want her around someone, then that's what I mean! And maybe you should consider that when I tell you something like that, it's for a good reason and not just because I'm trying to make your life harder."

"Anna-" he tried again, beginning to understand what she was talking about.

"No, don't 'Anna' me. And don't give me that speech about being her father and how she can be around anyone you want her to be around," she exclaimed.

She either did not notice or did not care that every eye in the diner was now glued on her and Luke as they argued.

"Since when do you get to make the rules about who April sees and doesn't see?" Luke exploded. "It's not like I'm letting her hang out with drug dealers and prostitutes on the street corner. When April's here, at the diner, she's going to be around people who come in. This is a diner. Customers order the food. I cook the food. Customers eat the food. That's what a diner is, in case you haven't noticed. If she's here, she's going to be around the customers."

"I'm not talking about customers. I'm talking about your ex-girlfriend. Your sister is one thing, and I still have some misgivings about that, but letting April spend time with and _bond with_ your ex-girlfriend is something entirely different."

"Hey, wait a second-"

"Because we ran into her at the mall, April and I. And imagine my surprise to hear about all the time April has been spending with this woman, who I specifically told you I didn't want her to be around," Anna said angrily.

"Lorelai is a friend-"

"She's your ex-girlfriend!" she interrupted. "And you're letting her become a part of April's life. What happens the next time you two have a fight and stop speaking to each other? Do you really want to put April in the middle of that? Do you have any idea how crushed she'd be? April becomes very attached to people and I don't want her getting hurt by this on-again, off-again relationship you have going on with this trampy ex-girlfriend of yours."

Stunned silence met Anna's last remark even as Luke's blood heat to a boiling point. Patty, who had been watching the exchange with as much wide-eyed curiosity as everyone else in the diner, involuntarily leaned back in her seat as she waited for his response.

Luke did not disappoint.

"First of all, April's my daughter. I would never intentionally hurt her or bring her pain. But she's thirteen years old, Anna. You can't protect her forever, and you certainly can't protect her from losing people she's close to. That is just going to happen. It's a part of life." As he spoke, his voice started to gradually build until he was very nearly shouting at her. "As for who _I'm _allowed to let her see, like you said, I'm her father. I have just as much right to her as you do. But really, I she's old enough to decide for herself who she wants to spend time with. You can't pick and choose her friends her entire life, Anna. And as for my relationship with Lorelai, that is _none _of your business. But for your information, Lorelai and I are _friends_. I have known her for over ten years, and she's probably the best influence anyone could have on a teenage girl!"

"Really, the woman who got pregnant at sixteen is a good influence on my daughter?" Anna said sarcastically.

"Yes, absolutely," Luke replied instantly. "Because even though she made a mistake, she owned up to it and did everything in her power to give Rory the best life she possibly could. And Lorelai not only raised her daughter and sent her to a fancy Ivy League school, she put _herself _through school. She started her own _successful _business. She's a leader in this community and the best friend I've ever had!" Remembering the rest of her diatribe, he added, "And the next time you want to call someone a tramp, you should consider the fact that April had to run DNA tests on _three _men to find out who her father was."

Even if Anna had a response to Luke's explosion, it would have been drowned out by the applause that suddenly erupted from the diner patrons, most of whom were town members and knew Lorelai personally. Somehow, in the middle of shouting at each other, they had forgotten their unwitting audience.

"This isn't over," she told Luke sharply before turning to leave.

"You're sure as hell right about that," he shot back.

But once she had gone and the diner atmosphere had returned to normal, he still found himself staring angrily out the window as her words replayed over and over again in his mind. To distract himself, he concentrated on his work and went to Patty's table to refill her coffee.

"That was some scene," the dance instructor said.

"Yeah, well..."

"You certainly stood up for Lorelai."

Luke sighed in annoyance at his complete and utter lack of privacy. He felt like he was constantly under a microscope, being watched and examined by everyone – the town, April, and now even Anna. He especially hated reliving his problems with Lorelai through everyone's less-than-vague insinuations and comments.

Without warning, he reached down and randomly picked up one of the scattered pictures of single women Patty had been going through at her table. He barely registered that the woman was a pretty brunette before handing the photograph to Patty. "Her," he said curtly. "Get me her name and phone number and I'll ask her out for New Year's."

Patty smiled widely at the choice despite the fact that she noticed he had barely even looked at the picture. "Oh, you won't be sorry, honey. This one's a very nice girl." And as he walked away, she said to herself, "Just the perfect rebound date for you."


	8. When Harry Met Sally

**Chapter 8: When Harry Met Sally**

"I can't believe you went to London and didn't take any pictures mocking the royal guards in front of the palace," Lorelai complained to her daughter as they drove into town to Miss Patty's. "You can do anything to them and they're not supposed to move. That is the perfect picture-taking opportunity!"

"And I was too busy with Logan," Rory said with mock disappointment, shaking her head in feigned shame. "I'll see what I can do next time."

"You better!" Lorelai smiled over at her warmly as she parked the car. "But it's good to have you back. I missed you."

"Me too." As they got out of the car and began making their way the short distance to Patty's dance studio, she asked, "Remind me again why we didn't just walk here?"

Using her 'duh' voice, her mom simply pointed downward and said, "These shoes? Walking? Not happening." Indeed, Lorelai was more dressed up for the annual New Year' Eve party than usual, wearing her low-cut orange dress and black strappy heels.

Once inside Miss Patty's, they found the party in full swing. The dance studio was decorated in the typical streamers and ornaments, with the Founder's punch bowl sitting in a place of prominence near the front door. Because of the lack of room and Lane's 'delicate' state, Patty had forgone asking Hep Alien to play at the party and instead convinced Kirk to serve as DJ.

After making the usual rounds and exchanging greetings with everyone, they found their way to the refreshment table. "There are a lot of people here," Rory said, surprised at the turn-out – easily half again as many people as the previous year. However, there was one notable absence.

"There sure are," Lorelai agreed, doing her best not to seem too obvious as she scanned the crowd for that familiar figure. With all the post-Christmas activity at the inn, she had not been able to make it to the diner - or rather, that was her excuse for avoiding _Luke's_. In reality, ever since bumping into April and Anna at the mall she had felt somewhat nervous about seeing him again, not sure what kind of fallout may have resulted from the chance encounter. She knew she had done nothing wrong, but she had no wish to make things more difficult for Luke and his daughter.

"He's not coming, dear," Patty said, materializing at Lorelai's side. She automatically jumped in response to the other woman's voice, and it took her a few seconds to understand her meaning.

"Uh, who's not coming?" she asked, pretending not to know who 'he' referred to even as she suppressed her disappointment.

Ignoring the question (because seriously, who was Lorelai kidding?), Patty continued, "He has a date, you know. I tried to convince him to bring her to the party, but he absolutely refused. Something about fishbowls and privacy."

"Like there's any privacy in this town," Rory joked, glancing over to see her mother's reaction to this information. Lorelai looked surprisingly calm and collected. "So who is she?"

"Oh, just this young woman I know, a fellow dance instructor actually. She lives in Hartford but she grew up in Litchfield. Pretty little thing. Certainly not as pretty as you, honey," she told Lorelai quickly, "But trust me – seeing what's out there is just what Luke needs right now. Besides, it evens the score a bit." Giving Lorelai a patented wink, she merged back into the crowd as she shouted at Kirk to play something people could dance to.

Lorelai rolled her eyes in the wake of Patty's obvious attempt to make her jealous, but Rory could tell by her silence that the news had shaken her. "So, Luke has a date," she said, trying to bring the subject out into the forefront so her mother could deal with it.

"Well, it was bound to happen eventually. We've been broken up for six months," Lorelai pointed out, knowing that it was unnecessary to add that she had started dating Christopher less than six _days _after their break-up.

"Yeah, but I thought you two were doing good, getting closer," Rory said sadly.

"We are good. We're just not _there _yet, you know? And we may never get there." Sighing a little, she said, "But if we end up as just friends, that's okay. We were good at being friends. And, it's something at least, right?"

Rory nodded, but she was not at all convinced by her mother's statements.

In truth, neither was Lorelai. She knew what people in town had been talking about, the speculations as to when she and Luke would get back together. Part of her wanted to revel in their certainty of a reconciliation, but deep down she knew it was a long shot. While she and Luke had been slowly regaining ground with each other, they still were not back to the level of comfort they had been at prior to dating, let alone during their relationship. And as much as she also wanted to go back to being in a relationship with Luke, she knew that she had yet to regain his trust. And Luke's trust, once lost, was very hard to get back.

Maybe he was right. Maybe they were not right for each other. Maybe they were better off apart.

"So, talk to me about something that doesn't involve Luke or this town," Lorelai asked her daughter, desperate for a distraction.

"Well, I talked to dad yesterday..." Rory began, but then stopped, instantly reconsidering the topic. She had been waiting half the night for an opportunity to share her latest bit of gossip. But her mother's romantic life had made regular conversation a veritable minefield.

"No, that's good," Lorelai told her. "How's he doing? I haven't talked to him since... you know."

Christopher had taken the break-up surprisingly well, almost as though he knew it was coming. He told her that he knew she was still dealing with what he termed her 'Luke issues,' but said he was confident that once she had, they would have a future together. At the time Lorelai's only reaction was gratitude at his gentle understanding, but in hindsight, she wondered if he had really ever understood her at all.

She still felt pangs of guilt over having entered the relationship with him to begin with. She knew she had done it as a means of escaping the gnawing loneliness of Luke's absence. Plus she missed that feeling of being wanted, something she had not felt since the beginning of her engagement with Luke. In truth, being with Christopher had never been about fulfilling some long-held fantasy of reuniting with her daughter's father or returning to some idealized childhood love. At the most, it was a way of making that one night together more than what it was – an abrupt end to the relationship with Luke. That night had been a mistake, perhaps the worst mistake of her life. But at the time, she thought that dating Christopher would make sleeping with him on the eve of her break-up less about her having ended something too painful to continue and more about beginning something new, something she truly wished she had wanted.

"He's good. He took Gigi to Paris to see Sherry."

"Yeah, he was talking about doing that, but he wanted to send her with the nanny," she said, remembering the thick 'apology letter' the woman had written to Christopher and how quickly he had wanted to forgive her. But with him, forgiving Sherry was not about absolving her of blame for something terrible she had done. It was about him and the residual guilt he carried for not being a part of Rory's young life. As well, she knew he desperately wanted a break from Gigi.

"He took the nanny, too, which probably wasn't..." Rory quickly trailed off, once again realizing that she had probably said too much.

Lorelai spotted the hesitation and jumped on it. "Probably wasn't what?"

"The best idea," she finished.

"You're not telling me..."

Rory threw up her hands quickly and said, "I don't know for sure, so don't be mad at him, but it sounded like a possibility."

"I'm not mad at him," Lorelai answered, confused at why her daughter would even suggest it. So what if Christopher was having a fling with his daughter's twenty-five-year-old nanny? After all, _she _had broken up with him.

She supposed that she should be angry, or hurt, or jealous. But she wasn't. She really wasn't. If anything, she felt relieved that Chris was turning his attention elsewhere, even if it was 'the nanny.' She repeated the words in her head a couple of times until the voice became that of Tom Hank in _You've Got Mail,_ then Fran Dresher's nasal whine. Suddenly the combination left her giggling in genuine amusement.

"What?" Rory demanded.

"Your dad's dating _the nanny_," she said by way of explanation. "Isn't that funny?"

Her daughter gave a little obligatory chuckle, "Yeah, I guess."

They were interrupted by Babette and Morey, who had just arrived at the party. As soon as she spotted them, their neighbor rushed over and without so much as a greeting declared, "Have you heard? Luke has a date! Patty set him up with some hussie from Hartford."

"Uh, we know," Rory said quickly, annoyed that her mother had to be subjected to this topic again. "Miss Patty already told us."

"Did she tell you the woman's a stripper?" Babette demanded.

"Patty said 'dance instructor,'" Lorelai answered, her curiosity piqued.

"Well, I don't care what Patty says. Morey and I looked her up on the computer – Morey's good at that sort of thing. Anyway, her website says she teaches '_strip _cardio.' Imagine that, she teaches people to be strippers!" she exclaimed. Morey, who was standing silently by her side, nodded gravely in agreement.

Rory looked at her mother, who was struggling to maintain some sort of neutral expression. But it was clearly a losing battle. All amusement Christopher's nanny reference had faded away, leaving that look of pained loss that she had been wearing for so long.

Lorelai stated with finality, "Luke can date whoever he wants."

She excused herself from the group with a vague statement about getting herself a drink, but once Rory was alone again she told her she was going home. She claimed not to be feeling well, but it was clearly an excuse and her daughter let it slide, insisting that she take the jeep.

But once in the car, Lorelai could barely hold it together long enough to get out on the street. As she stopped at the light in front of Luke's, she wiped at the moisture accumulating in her eyes. The reality of Luke dating someone else made her lose hope that they could ever work things out, that he even wanted to try again. She knew it was hypocritical to feel that way, having dated someone else herself. But she knew that Luke had always loved _her _- the woman who's horoscope he had carried since their first meeting. The thought of him out looking for another woman, someone to replace her... it was heartbreaking.

Out of habit, she glanced into the darkened diner, hoping to make out his familiar shape behind the counter.

She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that at first, Lorelai failed to see the light turn green. By the time she noticed it, the cycle had already gone back to yellow again and had just hit red as she began to accelerate through the intersection. Unfortunately, she did not notice the truck turning at the same time until the two vehicles hit in a sort of slow-motion collision that could only be called a classic fender-bender. Lorelai sat in her car for a few seconds, stunned at what had just occurred before she looked out her side window and noticed for the first time who was driving the truck.

It was Luke.

* * *

Luke's New Year's Eve date had been a complete disaster, although he knew he had only himself to blame. Anyone who voluntarily let themselves be set up by Miss Patty deserved whatever they had coming to them. 

The evening started with dinner at a nice restaurant in Hartford that _she _had picked out. Because it was a blind date, they met there, which made leaving in the middle of the meal so much easier. And while Luke had never considered himself the kind of man to bail on a date no matter how badly it was going, the panicked phone call he received from April made an unbeatable excuse.

Of course, the drive to Woodbury turned out to be a complete waste as well, seeing as how April had only called him to help her find a missing lizard that had crawled out of its cage and was promptly located behind the living room couch. Luke probably would have been more angry if she had not been so apologetic about interrupting his date – clearly the entire purpose of her phone call. And as he was leaving, he shared a chilly yet civil moment with Anna, who gave him a sympathetic shrug.

"I'm sorry about your evening. I honestly didn't know she'd called you. But if it makes you feel any better, when she was younger, she used to do the same thing with me," she told him. "Usually because she didn't like the idea of me dating someone new."

Luke nodded, beginning to understand her position on who she let her daughter have contact with and become attached to. April certainly disliked the idea of Luke moving on with anyone other than Lorelai, but the effect of their relationship on his daughter had never been so clear to him as it was in that moment.

"Trust me," Anna said. "I've been doing this a lot longer than you have. Not everything I say is just over-protective nonsense."

Her words stayed with him the entire drive back to Star's Hollow, so much so that he was not paying attention to the road. When the light turned green in front of him, he began to turn, not seeing the other car until too late. Luckily, the resulting crash (if it could even be called that), was so minor that he heard rather than felt it.

But as he got out of his truck, Luke recognized the other car and in particular the driver. A wave of fear overtook him as he noticed that she was crying, and she rushed over to her jeep.

"Jeez, Lorelai, are you okay?" he asked, opening the car door. He immediately began to search her face for cuts or bruises that may have resulted from the collision. "Are you hurt?"

But she gave an embarrassed fake laugh as she shook her head. "No, I'm fine," she assured him. "Just not having the best night. I can't believe I just did that." So, she had been crying before the crash, Luke deduced.

Lorelai quickly got out of the jeep and they both took turns surveying the damage, which as Luke had anticipated, was very small. Not even worthy of an insurance claim.

"Looks like just a little scratched paint," he assessed. "There's a good detailing place over in Litchfield that can fix that right up. I wouldn't even bother Gypsy with it."

"Let me know how much it is and I'll write you a check," Lorelai told him. Although he had technically hit her car she had been at fault for running the red light. Luke just nodded, and she suspected that he would never mention it again unless she brought it up.

"So, I see you're all dressed up. I guess you were at Miss Patty's big blow out, huh?" he asked.

Lorelai glanced down at her shoes and her dress and realized for the first time that night that she had worn one of his favorite outfits, the one she had worn to that party in New York. She had not done it on purpose, but the possibility of seeing him at the party had obviously effected her as she dressed earlier in the evening. As well, even though it did not match, she was wearing the dragonfly necklace he had given her for Christmas. She touched it unconsciously as she spoke.

"Yeah well, it's tradition. Besides, its kind of nice ending the year where you began," she said, glancing at the ground and feeling suddenly very foolish. So much had changed in one year. "I hear you had some big plans tonight yourself."

This time it was Luke's turn to feel embarrassed as he realized how extensive the Star's Hollow grapevine went and from how many people Lorelai had probably heard about his date. "Yeah, well, Patty... set me up." He paused, not sure how much more to say. It felt strange to talk to her about another woman, like he was deliberately being mean. But of all the people who could sympathize with his terrible evening, Lorelai was certainly high on the list. "Remind me never to let her do that again."

Lorelai laughed. "Bad?"

"She calls herself Gazelle – like the animal. Her real name is Bonnie, but she didn't think that was 'cool enough' for the 'biz.' The whole night, she ate three bites of food and then complained about how stuffed she was," he said, slipping into a mocking tone Lorelai was familiar with. "And she teaches something called 'strip aerobics.'"

"Babette mentioned that," she said.

"Well, I don't know _exactly _what it is, but when she started talking about the proper way to grip the pole, I had to change the subject." He grimaced uncomfortably at the notion. "Whatever happened to just running or playing sports for exercise?"

Unable to keep herself from grinning at Luke's rendition, Lorelai teased, "Oh, come on. You can't tell me that wouldn't be fun to watch."

"I guess it depends..." He trailed off before he could finish the thought. He had been about to say, _I guess it depends on who you're watching._

But his silence broke the moment, and Lorelai made a motion to her jeep. "I guess I better get home..."

Before she could move to her car, he nodded his head towards the diner and asked, "You want to come in for some coffee or a beer or whatever?"

She did not think, did not analyze his invitation. She simply listened in amazement as her lips said with complete casualness, "Sure, let me just move my car."

Within a few minutes, they had settled across from each other at one of the diner tables, each with an open bottle of beer in front of them. Across the square they could hear the music and the guests at Miss Patty's party. It was a quiet moment, comfortable in its simplicity. Neither felt pressured to do or say anything beyond what immediately came to mind. To Luke, it felt like they had stepped out of time for a while. The last few minutes of the year, they were no longer ex-fiances or former friends. They were simply Luke and Lorelai, two people who knew each other better than anyone.

"Can I ask you something?" he said after a moment.

"Sure," she answered.

"If you could go back and change one thing... one thing that happened between us, what would it be?"

"You mean besides the obvious?" Lorelai quipped.

"What's 'the obvious'?" he asked. She raised her eyes at him in disbelief, and he nodded in understanding. "Yeah, okay, besides that." Neither of them particularly wanted to talk about _that_.

"I guess... I wouldn't have let things get so bad."

"Be specific," Luke requested softly.

"Well, for starters, I would have told you sooner how much I was hurting. I would have pushed you more to talk to me about things. And, most of all, I wouldn't have offered to let you postpone the wedding."

"Huh." He looked thoughtful as he considered that.

"I mean, when I offered, I didn't really expect you to jump on it like that."

Luke sighed in irritation. "Then why did you suggest it?"

"I didn't suggest it. I _offered_. And like I said, I didn't expect you to take me up on it. You just had so much going on, I didn't want our wedding to be another source of stress in your life. And I didn't expect it to be postponed indefinitely, like it was never going to happen."

"It was going to happen," he insisted. "I just needed more time."

"Yeah, because 'more time' is a line that works so well with me," Lorelai retorted.

They both fell silent as memories of their first break-up came back to them. Funny how history tended to repeat itself, despite all their good intentions to learn from past mistakes. Lorelai's attempt to give Luke time and space had resulted in a situation so unbearable for her that she had lost all sense of him and his love for her. Perhaps their confrontation in the street had been as inevitable as their first break-up in Doose's. In that way, Luke had failed to learn from the past, from his own experience at how devastatingly Lorelai took rejection.

"What about you?" she asked after a moment. "What would you have done differently?"

Luke thought about her question for a long time. She almost thought he was not going to respond at all when he offered, "I wouldn't have taken you for granted."

His words hit deep, and she had to focus to keep her voice from wavering as she said, "Be specific."

Luke pursed his lips and looked at the ground. When he looked up, she could see moisture in his eyes. Not tears really (she had never seen Luke cry), but definitely moisture. "I would have told you about April... I would have included you more in that. And I wouldn't have let you doubt me to the point that you had to ask if I loved you."

There was a long paused before Lorelai said, "I would never have given you that ultimatum."

"I would have gone with you when you did."

"I wish..." Lorelai stopped, not certain if she should finish the thought that had popped into her head. But as she looked at the man in front of her, the man she had once planned to spend the rest of her life with, she pressed on. "I wish I had told you 'I love you' sooner. Not like I did that night."

Luke simply stared at her without speaking, and she was afraid she had overstepped the bounds of whatever truth-telling agreement they had formed. But then he said, very quietly, "I knew."

"I still wish I had said it. Sooner. Better. Not like that."

He nodded silently as he focused on the surface of the table between them, unwilling or unable to speak. While it was obvious to him that Lorelai's regrets about that night ran deep and wide, he never thought her hastily-mentioned declaration of love would be so high up on the list. After she had walked away, he had spent that night and all the next day replaying her words in his mind. Her intense desire to get married immediately. Her frustration with the situation with April and Anna. But the thing that stuck with him the most, even more than her asking if he cared about her, was her heart-felt "I love you."

She had said it twice, the second time more forceful than the first. And while the tenor of her voice had been as desperate and pleading as her request to elope, she had sounded more certain than he ever thought she would when she finally said those three little words. Of course, he had never let himself consider them for any length of time due to the surrounding circumstances. It was just too painful.

And a part of him still wondered how she could possibly have meant what she said when she spent that night in another man's bed.

"I guess we both have a lot of regrets," Luke said.

"Yeah," she agreed.

They sat quietly again, neither sure what to say next.

"Well... I guess I should go," she said finally.

When he did not argue, she stood up from the table and slowly walked towards the door. Luke moved to open the door for her and then follow her out. But as they stepped outside, Lorelai paused on the sidewalk before turning around to face Luke, standing so close to him that she feel the warmth radiating from him despite the cold night air. Their moment in time was almost up. They could hear the sounds of Patty's guests counting down the last few seconds of the year 2006.

"Five."

"Four."

"Three."

"Two."

Before they reached, "One," Lorelai leaned forward and kissed him. Unlike their kiss at Christmas, this kiss was neither chaste nor quick.

Their lips and tongues tangled together in a slow, deliberate exploration. Her arms went around his body, hugging him to her as tightly as she could. His hands automatically found their familiar grip on her hips, pulling her against him just as forcefully.

For Lorelai, it was a return to the beginning. To the beginning of the year, when they had stood just that close and kissed at Miss Patty's last party, not caring who was around to see them. It was a return to the beginning of their relationship, when they had kissed for the first time at the threshold of the Dragonfly. And maybe - just maybe - it was a return to something greater, to the level of commitment they had shared when they kissed in the gazebo the night Luke had accepted her proposal.

They eventually broke apart for oxygen, but for a second, seeing the agonizing hope and desperation in her eyes, Luke kept her from pulling completely away. The look on her face was a question, a plea for forgiveness really. She wanted him back. She wanted another chance and she had finally stopped being afraid to let him see that.

But just as clearly, Lorelai could see the fear reflected back in his eyes. Fear of betrayal, of being hurt again. She could tell that he wanted her, that he still loved her, despite everything. But he was being cautious, holding himself back from her.

He needed more time. He needed time to sort through his thoughts and emotions, to figure out how how things had gone so wrong and how to keep that from happening again in the future. And most of all, he needed time to forgive her, to reconcile within himself the pain she had caused.

And she could give him that.

"Happy New Year's Eve," she whispered. She smiled at him warmly before pulling away completely and turning to leave.

"Lorelai," he said, reaching out a hand to stop her, afraid she had misunderstood. "I just..."

Her reply was simple and full of understanding. "It's okay. I can wait," she assured him. But then she leaned forward again and placed another gentle kiss on his lips, shy and quick like a promise of the future. When she spoke, it was so softly that he almost could not hear it. "I love you."

As he watched her walk away that night and get in her car, Luke felt certain that she had never looked more beautiful.


	9. Love Actually

**A/N**: Sorry this chapter wasn't posted as quickly as the others have been. Once I start a story, I really strive to finish it without delay so that I don't lose momentum in writing. Alas, sometimes Real Life has a way of throwing you unexpected curve balls.

Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing. And special thanks to Makita for being my beta and general sounding board in all things.

* * *

**Chapter 9: Love Actually**

The weeks following New Year's Eve went by in a blur for Luke. April started back at school, so he got to see her less. But at the same time, he saw Lorelai more and more. Not only did she come to the diner every morning for coffee, but sometimes she would drop by for dinner as well. She never pushed him or said anything about the kiss they had shared or the words she had spoken. She was simply there, engaging him in conversation and giving him teasing smiles over her coffee.

Lorelai took her cues from him. If he seemed annoyed or upset, she would leave him alone. When he looked lonely or bored, she made herself available. With the practiced ease of someone who knew him better than anyone, she read his moods and adjusted herself accordingly. He supposed that in her own unique way, she was trying to win him back slowly, trying to show him that she was there for him if needed her, but also giving him the time and space he needed.

And Luke appreciated it. He genuinely had a lot to think about. While he knew that he loved Lorelai, had always loved her, the fissures that had developed in their relationship ran too deep to simply gloss over. It bothered him that she had been so unhappy for so long without his seeing it. And even more than that, the fact that she had not told him until that night in the street made him wonder why she had held back, why she had not confided in him.

Luke had never been a particularly talkative man, and communication had certainly never been their strong suit as a couple. But he understood now that Lorelai had genuinely thought they were never getting married, that when he had postponed the wedding to the indefinite future she thought it would never happen. The knowledge that she had doubted him certainly hurt, but, at the same time, he hated himself for causing her that doubt. Somehow, he had taken a wonderful, beautiful, vivacious woman so full of life and love, and turned her into the hysterical mess that had come to him begging to elope because she had lost hope that they would eventually marry.

Elope. That night, the word had sounded so frightening, so very real and immediate. He was still not certain why he had balked. They were, after all, engaged. They had even talked about eloping at the Vineyard. But instead of going with her then, reassuring her of his love and devotion by driving to Maryland in the middle of the night so they could exchange vows, he had hesitated.

At the time, he remembered using his new-found daughter as his reason for waiting – he had April to consider. That's what he had said. In hindsight it sounded so flimsy and irrational, so much like what it actually was: an excuse. April was not the problem and she never had been. She was simply the physical embodiment of all his most closely held insecurities.

Could he really be a good husband to Lorelai, a father to her children? By the time April had entered his life, he had failed in both roles. His 'marriage' to Nicole had been a farce to begin with, but the fact that it concluded with him wearing another man's socks and kicking a car in the street had not done much for his confidence. At the same time, while Jess had turned out well in the end, Luke had a hard time attributing that to any skills he had as a parent.

And then he found April… she was perfect – smart, funny, independent, kind. She was brilliant in a way he would never understand, and yet she was also good with people, able to charm them in a way that had always amazed him. And Luke could take credit for none of it because he hadn't been there. Certainly, he knew that it was not his fault because Anna had kept her from him, but that did not negate the fact that for twelve years, he was not a part of his daughter's life.

For years, Luke had watched Rory grow up without a father and silently cursed the man who had voluntarily left her and Lorelai to fend for themselves. And yet, by a twist of fate, he had unknowingly done the same thing to April.

"It's not the same thing," Liz told him one afternoon. Her due date was coming ever closer and the doctor had prescribed bed rest, so he had gone over to make her lunch and check on her. He had told her about the situation with Lorelai and confessed his own guilt about April. And while Luke and his sister had not always had the closest of relationships, she was the only one he felt comfortable talking to about something so personal.

"I know it's not the same thing," he agreed. "But it still feels like it."

"Luke, you've only known her a year. And in that time, you've done everything you can to be there for her and to be a good father," she said in earnest.

"And I drove Lorelai away in the process," he grumbled. "Back to _him_."

"Hey, no one said you were perfect. You're a Danes, after all," Liz pointed out. "And Lorelai made her own decisions. You aren't responsible for everything."

"I guess I keep looking for a reason… _something_ to explain what she did," he sighed. No matter how many times he had turned over her explanations in his mind, they just never came out right. They were never enough to show why she would throw away everything they had. "Maybe if I understood it somehow, I could finally just get over it and forgive her."

"Big brother, trying to understand a woman is like…" Liz paused, searching for the appropriate analogy. "Like trying to understand those big mathematical, scientology formulas they have for predicting the weather. Sure, they say they know when it's going to rain and how many hurricanes are going to hit this year, but they never get it right. It's the same with women. Sometimes _we_ don't even know why we do what we do. So there's really no way you're going to figure it out."

"That's very reassuring," Luke noted sarcastically.

She paused to give him an amused smile. "Look… she did it. She can't undo what she did. From what you've said, it sounds like she's sorry. Right now, it's just up to you and whether you believe her. Whether you want to trust her again. Only you can decide that."

She let the words hang in the air and gave him a hopeful look. Liz genuinely liked Lorelai, and she knew the woman made her brother happy. Luke needed to see that and to let himself be happy for once, even if in the process he had to take a few risks with his heart. Besides, the two of them were just meant to be together – she felt it like she had when she met TJ.

"I do," he said softly. "I do want to trust her."

Luke truly wanted to open his life back up to Lorelai, to just forget all the angry words and hurt feelings. But deep down, he also feared the possibility of taking her back and then living the rest of his life suspicious of her, always wondering if she would go running back to _him_ if things got tough again. They had broken up twice now, and both times he found himself heart-broken and lost without her, all because of a man who had never done anything to deserve Lorelai's love or devotion. Perhaps it was foolish for Luke to consider a third run at the gauntlet.

Liz nodded in understanding. She opened her mouth to speak, but then was suddenly distracted by something. "Luke, it's time," she stated after a moment.

He sighed in resignation rather than resolve. He would give into it eventually, right? So why prolong the agony? It made no sense. "Yeah, I suppose you're right. I should just get over all this and-"

"No," she interrupted. "I mean, _it's time_." To punctuate her statement, she moved to get off the couch, gesturing for him to help her up.

"It's time?" he asked, not quite understanding for half a second, and then the realization hit him. "Oh! It's time!"

Luke suddenly felt that strange urge to run around in a panic like they always did on television when someone was about to give birth. A million thoughts hit him at once. First, he had to get her to the hospital as soon as possible. That was a given. Second, he knew there was supposed to be stuff to take with them to the hospital. A bag of some kind. In the movies and on those sitcoms Lorelai used to make him watch, they always had a bag packed and ready by the door.

Luke glanced around the small living room, but no bag. Instead, Liz was simply grabbing her purse as she slowly walked towards the door, one hand supporting her stomach like she feared the baby was going to accidentally drop out on the way to the car. That thought promptly reminded him that she was not due for nearly another month, and he instantly feared the consequences of the baby coming early. Thankfully, Luke's naturally pragmatic instincts kicked in at the same time, and he followed after her, intent on simply getting her to the hospital. Everything else could wait.

* * *

As it turned out, the bag of stuff was unnecessary after all. 

"False labor. Of all the bad luck…" Liz muttered as she re-entered her home several hours later. Luke followed behind her looking almost as disappointed in the lack of outcome. After the long drive to the hospital and frantically flagging down an emergency room nurse, Liz was examined and deemed to be having false contractions. True enough, not long afterwards they stopped completely and she was sent home.

"Oh well," she continued. "I guess it's all for the best. I really wanted TJ to be there anyway. Not that you wouldn't make a great coach. He's just been practicing a lot, and I think he's really looking forward to it." Luke made no comment, although he had his doubts about TJ's abilities to handle stress, especially when Liz was the source of that stress.

Luke waited with her until TJ got home, even though he was subjected a barrage of questions regarding his opinion on various baby names. While he was partial to Erin, Sabrina, and Bethany, he was not fond of Jasmine, Saffron, or Myrrh, the latter of which TJ had been lobbying for because of their renaissance applicability.

"Why do you even need a girl's name?" Luke asked Liz before he left. "I thought you were sure it's going to be a boy?"

"Well, I thought about it. And I decided that I was so sure it was going to be a boy, I had to be wrong. I'm never that sure about anything, and when I am, I'm always wrong. So it must be a girl. And we need to have a name picked out. It's just my luck anyway that we'll have a girl and not have a girl's name ready, so we'll give her the boy's name instead-" She put one hand to the side of her face as though to tell a secret, "-because I plan to have all the drugs I can get. And then, for the rest of my life I'll have a child who hates me because I named her after her father."

Luke smiled at the logic, although her description reminded him of Lorelai. She had once told him that she blamed the effects of the Demerol for naming Rory after herself. That and the fact that men did it all the time. Personally, he loved the fact that she named her daughter after herself – it was just a Lorelai thing to do.

Of course, on the drive back to the diner, Luke found himself wondering what he would have suggested as a name for April, had he been included in the decision. Not that April's name wasn't great. It suited her. Like the season, it was light and cheery. But he supposed that he probably would have offered his mother's name, even though he doubted Anna would have approved. She would have said he was hanging onto the past, as he was when he turned his father's hardware store into a diner. And perhaps he would be – hanging onto the past, that is. He missed both his parents terribly. And as much as he loved Liz and having her around, sometimes he felt very alone in the world.

When he reached the diner, he entered from the back and almost went straight upstairs to his apartment without checking in with Caesar and Lane. But then he noted the time: six thirty. The time Lorelai usually came in on the evenings she ate at the diner.

Sure enough, as Luke walked through the curtain he saw her sitting at the counter and talking to Lane as she sipped a cup of coffee. She seemed tired, perhaps even a little sad, but that did not keep her from entertaining her daughter's pregnant best friend with some anecdote that she told with excitement and enthusiasm. For her part, Lane leaned tiredly across the counter, grateful for the break. Luke was suddenly reminded that like his sister, she would be expecting soon as well.

"Hey stranger," Lorelai greeted him when she saw him, her voice casual even though her eyes lit up upon seeing him, whatever sadness he had previously seen in her expression completely disappearing. "Where have you been?"

"Had to take Liz to the hospital," he said, then recounted the entire story to her and Lane, only omitting the particular expletives his sister had used during her false contractions.

"Oh, poor thing," she sympathized.

"That's awful," Lane added, thoughts of false labor making her vision swim. And as if on cue, she excused herself to go to the rest room.

Luke sighed as she walked away, once again calculating her due date and fretting over how hard she worked herself. Lorelai followed his eyes and as if reading his mind and asked in a teasing tone, "Tired of being surrounded by pregnant women?"

He shrugged in response. "I'm just don't like her being on her feet all the time. The doctor put Liz on bed rest to make sure the baby didn't come early. But Lane can't really afford to do that..."

Lorelai smiled at his obvious concern for the girl. "She'll be okay," she assured him. "You do everything you can for her, sending her home early, making her take breaks…" She thought for a moment before saying, "I guess you could always have her do your ordering and bookwork upstairs, so she doesn't have to stand so much. After all, she is a people-person, and she has a good head for numbers."

Nodding at the idea, Luke agreed thoughtfully, "Yeah, that might work." While there generally was not a lot of office work associated with the diner, Luke had never been terribly fond of that part of his job. He especially hated calling and dealing with suppliers, even though he had been using the same people for years. The work would only take Lane out of the hustle and bustle of the diner for a few hours a week, if that, but they would still be a few hours she could relax a little rather than drag her exhausted, pregnant body around filling orders and carrying plates.

The thought of food made Luke suddenly realize that Lorelai did not have any sitting in front of her. Based on the time, he would have thought her to be starving and wondered why she had not ordered yet. Then he realized the reason.

She was waiting for him. When she came to the diner in the morning, it was generally only for a few moments to pick up a cup of coffee. But in the evenings, she came to see him. Eating the food she had grown accustomed to surviving on over the years was certainly a side benefit, but it was also one she had learned to live without since their break-up. No, Lorelai came to the diner and ate at the counter so she could see him, talk to him, and just generally spend time with him. It was her way of being there without pushing. She was giving him time and space while also reinforcing her simple desire to be with him.

"You haven't ordered yet?" he asked to confirm but already knowing the answer.

"Uh, no, not yet," she said, sounding almost embarrassed for having been found out. "Lane and I got to talking and I didn't get a chance..."

"Well, it looks like she's got things under control down here for now. What do you say I make you something and maybe we can go upstairs and watch a movie or something," he suggested boldly, ignoring that nagging feeling of nervous hesitation that threatened to kill the words in his throat. "I still haven't watched those 'Ape People' DVDs you got me for Christmas…"

Any fear of rejection was quickly dispelled as her face showed surprised delight at the unexpected invitation. "I'd love to," she told him, her eyes blazing fiercely with unspoken emotion. In his own casual, understated way, Luke had just asked her on a date. Their first date since breaking up. It was a small step, but definitely one going in the right direction.

Luke nodded slowly. "Okay then," he said.

Afraid of letting the moment get too serious, Lorelai quickly asked, "So, can I have a burger? With chili cheese fries?"

He rolled his eyes in mock disgust. "Yeah," he allowed grudgingly.

"And can I have a piece of pie with that?" she followed up.

"I suppose," Luke answered, drawing out the words as though they took great effort. He turned to head for the kitchen to get started on the order.

"And Luke?"

Turning around, he arched an eyebrow at her in question. She held up her coffee cup – now empty – and purred, "More coffee?"

"That stuff is going to kill you," he warned.

She flashed him a flirtatious smile. "Yeah, but what a way to go."

* * *

They ended up spending the evening just as he had suggested – eating dinner up in his apartment while watching Charleton Heston prance around the television screen in little more than a loin cloth. They sat on his couch together, at first being careful not to touch. But as the movie wore on and they began to feel more at ease, Lorelai found herself leaning into him, letting her head rest against his shoulder. Then Luke put his arm around her, settling them into a comfortable position as they continued watching the movie. 

When the movie finished, Lorelai could sense his reluctance to end the moment. She could tell that he was trying to decide whether to give into his feelings and ask her to say the night with him. The tension in his body was as obvious as the conflict in his heart. He wanted her, certainly, but he was not yet ready to give himself up to her completely.

Lorelai knew that if Luke asked or made any movement towards that end, she would give him whatever physical affirmations of her love that he wanted. She considered the opportunity to make love with Luke again to be a gift, not a burden or a sacrifice. She welcomed any opportunity to demonstrate to him how she felt, to show him that she would give him anything he wanted or needed of her.

And yet, at the same time, Lorelai also knew that Luke would not feel right being with her physically until he was ready to be with her in all other respects. The night he had come to her house after their first break up, she had known herself to be forgiven the moment he swept her into his passionate embrace. That was simply the way he was, the way he loved – fully and completely. He could not be with her again until he had worked things out in his own mind, until he had forgiven her. To force or entice him into something he was not yet ready for would only be counter-productive.

In the end, Lorelai simply bid him goodnight, letting her eyes say what her voice could not. She wanted to kiss him, but at the same time she did not want to overstep the bounds that she had set for herself in giving him time. Instead, she hugged him, wrapping her arms around his body in a gesture of friendly confidence. As she did so, she felt him tense, although not necessarily in a negative way. Instead, it was as though he had to fight his body's natural reaction to her touch. But just as quickly, Lorelai let him go, almost afraid that if she did not step back from his warm, solid frame that she would never be able to.

Luke let her go, although he gave her hand a gentle squeeze as he did so, a silent thank-you for understanding. "See you tomorrow?" he asked, walking her to the door. They both knew he did not mean just for morning coffee.

"Sure," she answered easily.

* * *

January passed by slowly. And like a mountain stream running across river rocks, smoothing away the sharp edges, Luke felt himself gradually softened by Lorelai's steadfast presence in his life. She was always there, always available, but never asking him for too much. They spent time together, but without pressure to put any specific labels on their relationship. They were neither truly back together, nor were they really apart anymore. 

Their limbo-like status frustrated Lorelai, but she endeavored to remain patient, to give Luke the time he needed. Time. Before, the concept of giving him too much time had terrified her. It still did, but the fear of losing him altogether proved stronger. In some ways, the situation reminded her of when they had been engaged during that interminable period after Luke had postponed the wedding. Then, she had felt time slipping away from them with no relief in sight. All her hopes and dreams for the future felt like they died with the last of her June 3rd cancellations. So she had pushed him, given him an ultimatum. And just like before, when she pushed him following her parents' vow renewal, things ended badly.

But despite the fact that she had fewer assurances than ever before, with no ring on her finger or Luke in her bed, she felt an odd sense of hope. Things were still off between them, but they _would_ get better. They were moving forward, not standing still. With every passing day she could feel his trust in her growing, his heart healing a little more. Because ultimately, she wanted Luke back, but she wanted him to be whole again just as much

For his part, Luke did everything in his power to show Lorelai that he had changed as well and that he did want her back in his life. On several occasions they had dinner with April, even though Lorelai had the feeling it was against Anna's wishes. He also kept her up to date about Liz, who had undergone two more trips to the hospital for false labor pains.

"She said she feels like the girl who 'cried labor,'" he said, detailing the latest story to her one evening as she sat at the diner counter, watching him close up. "And she claimed that the doctor even rolled his eyes when he saw her come in the last time."

"Well, it'll be the one time she doesn't go to the hospital that she's actually in labor," Lorelai agreed, very familiar with that variation of Murphy's Law herself. "Did they ever decide on a girl's name?"

"Last I heard, the top favorites were Jo…"

"Oh, that's pretty," Lorelai commented.

"And Gardenia," he finished.

"Gardenia? Like the flower?"

"Yep. Gardenia Rose. That's the one Liz likes right now. Something about smelling gardenias when she was on the way to the hospital with Jess."

"Well, at least they aren't talking about the name Jessica," Lorelai pointed out. "That would be a little weird."

"They considered your name for a while," he said without thinking. His declaration was met with a look of utter surprise.

"Really?" she asked. "That's… sweet."

The oddness of the circumstance left her momentarily speechless, and she was grateful when he stuttered, "Well, TJ said he liked the name, so…"

"When was this?"

"A few months ago. Thanksgiving, I think."

Lorelai nodded, a picture of the circumstances forming in her mind. She sometimes wondered if Liz's pregnancy made him think about the kids the two of them were supposed to have. She certainly thought of it every time she saw Lane's rapidly growing stomach.

As if on cue, the diner phone rang and Luke reached for it. After listening for a moment, he said into the receiver, "Hey… okay, slow down… are you sure…? Okay, I'll meet you there." Hanging up, he turned to Lorelai and told her, "That was TJ. Liz is in labor."

"Again?"

"Apparently it's for real this time. Sounds like her water broke. I'm meeting them at the hospital."

Lorelai stood up immediately, ready to let him lock up the diner. "Well, I guess… Let me know how it goes," she said, backing towards the door.

Luke paused before answering, and when he did speak it was with a quiet, tentative tone. "Do you want to go with me?" he asked.

"Do you want me to go with you?" she said automatically, surprised at the request.

"Only if you want to. You don't have to if you don't… I mean, I don't know how long we'll be there or anything, but-"

"Luke, if you want me to go with you, I'm there," Lorelai said unequivocally. She meant more than just going to the hospital with him and she desperately hoped that he understood that.

"Okay then…" he said. "Let's go."

* * *

Less than twelve hours later, Liz finally gave birth, the nurse coming into the adjacent hallway to inform Luke and Lorelai of the news. "It's a boy. The mother's doing fine," she said. "They're moving them to private room. You should be able to see them in a few minutes." 

Luke had been grateful for Lorelai's presence throughout the night as his dislike for hospitals had remained as strong as ever. While they waited through the hours of Liz's labor, she had distracted him with tales of Rory as a baby, then drawing out from him a few of his ever-increasing stories about April. He told her about the upcoming Valentine's Day dance at his daughter's school, which he had somehow been talked into chaperoning.

"They're thirteen," he grumbled. "What is there to chaperone?"

Lorelai looked at him in amusement. "Well, I was only a few years older than that when I ended up in the position Liz is in right now…"

"Ah, jeez," Luke sighed, now having a whole new worry about April to consider.

"Relax," she assured him, reaching out a hand to rub his shoulder. "No one dances at these things anyway. At this age, they mostly just stand around in groups and stare at each other until one girl decides to go to the bathroom. Then all the other girls follow her to the bathroom, and the guys are left standing around staring at each other."

"So what are the adults supposed to do?"

"Endure bad hip-hop music, make sure no one gets into a fight over one of the girls in the restroom, and sell over-priced lemonade. But really, it's not that bad."

Luke smiled at her. "Do the adults get to bring dates?" he asked.

Lorelai shrugged. "I don't know. Do the adults want to bring dates?" she returned, matching his flirtatious tone.

"I think there's a definite possibility."

They got no further with the conversation as the nurse returned to show them to Liz's room. She lay in bed holding the new baby, a look of combined exhaustion and wonder lighting her face. TJ sat on the edge of the bed, also tired from the all-night ordeal, but unable to take his eyes off the child. Liz looked up as she saw them enter.

"Hey big brother," she greeted him softly. "And Lorelai, I didn't know you were here. It's good to see you!"

"Hi, Liz. Congratulations," she told the other woman, secretly relieved at her enthusiastic greeting. After everything that had transpired, she had often wondered how she was perceived among Luke's family.

"Luke, come here and meet your new nephew," the new mother requested.

He approached, but before he could even protest she had transferred the newborn into his arms. The tiny bundle was barely large enough to warrant two hands, but Luke held the baby like a fragile egg, terrified of dropping him.

"He's beautiful. Do you have a name yet?" Lorelai asked. In all her conversations with Luke about baby names, he had always told her about their conversations regarding girls' names.

"Yep," the new mother said, grinning. "We're calling him Gary, after TJ."

At this point, TJ jumped in excitedly. "That's 'cause Gary's actually my real name, so we thought it would be cool. Plus no one will get us confused because everyone calls me TJ. Besides, we decided that if we had a girl, we'd name her after Liz. That's so much easier than picking a completely new name."

"His full name is Gary Lucas," Liz added. This revelation prompted Luke to look up at her in surprise, then smile widely as he realized that she was serious.

"Hello, Gary Lucas," Lorelai whispered to the sleeping infant, looking at him over Luke's shoulder.

Seeing him hold a baby was a completely new experience for her. To the best of her knowledge he had never even held Sookie's children. But with his nephew safely enfolded in his arms, he looked natural. Comfortable, even. It pained her to think that he had missed that experience with his daughter.

As he drove Lorelai home from the hospital a little while later, Luke confessed the same feelings.

"I hate that I wasn't there for her growing up," he said.

"It wasn't your fault-" she began, but he interrupted her.

"I know, I know. But still…"

"Luke, you're a fantastic father, you really are," Lorelai said with conviction. "You had a choice. You could have let Anna continue to raise her alone and just stayed away. That would have been the easy thing to do. But you didn't do that. You became an active part of April's life, even though it was hard. And that's what she's going to remember."

"You think so?" he asked, still not completely sure.

"I really do."

TBC


	10. An Affair to Remember

**A/N: **Going beta-less on this chapter, so please forgive if it's a little rough around the edges. I wanted to get it out before the weekend. I'm also getting close to the end with this one, and I appreciate everyone's reviews so far.

* * *

**Chapter 10: An Affair to Remember**

Valentine's Day fell on a Wednesday that year, but by silent agreement neither Luke or Lorelai discussed it, choosing instead to make plans to attend April's school dance together the following Friday night. Luke knew that having her help him chaperone a middle school event was not the most romantic way to spend the holiday, but the prospect seemed to enliven her more than any weekend away he could have planned.

When Luke mentioned to Anna that he had asked Lorelai to go with him to the dance, he did so as a courtesy, not to ask permission. And while she allowed her displeasure to show, she did not argue the point. She did give him a warning that if April got hurt somehow because of his relationship with Lorelai, their custody agreement would be severely renegotiated.

As for April herself, she delighted in Luke and Lorelai's tentative steps back toward each other, offering her approval at every opportunity. In fact, she had been the one to initially suggest that Luke bring her to the Valentine's dance, mentioning that extra adults were never frowned upon.

The ride to the dance was oddly comfortable, familiar in a way Luke could not pinpoint. He had picked up Lorelai first, handing her a single red rose and a box of Mallomar cookies as she opened the door. They were clichéd Valentine's day gifts, he knew, but she smiled brightly at his understated gesture, reminded once again of how well he knew her.

Together they drove to Woodbridge to get April, who was possibly more excited about the two of them going with her than she was about the actual dance itself. Listening to the girls talk, Luke found himself wondering how he could have ever been foolish enough to think Lorelai would overshadow him as a parent. Even though she tended to dominate whatever conversation she was a part of, she still had a way of turning things back around to include him.

"I can't believe you got him to do the basket auction," April marveled, having witnessed her father's firm stance on those dreaded town functions.

"He spent over fifty dollars on two stale pop tarts and a slim jim," she said proudly, looking over at the man driving the truck.

"You drug me out there and made me bid," he grumbled, more out of habit than actual annoyance.

"And then he made us lunch, including _brownies_," she told April, adding in a whisper, "Deep down, he's really just a softie."

"I am not," he declared, causing both of them to giggle at his indignation. Sitting in the truck with the two of them, felt new and different, yet familiar. It felt… right, like his entire life had been building to that precise moment. He had a woman who loved him, who was willing to wait for him to figure things out. And he had a daughter, this whole other person who was a piece of him, who looked up to him and trusted him with her upbringing. It occurred to Luke suddenly that at that moment, in the close confines of his truck, he had something that was missing from his life for a long time. He had a family.

"You okay?" Lorelai asked, noticing how quiet he had become.

Luke just nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. So where are we supposed to park for this thing…?"

* * *

The dance was typical of such events, the middle school gymnasium awash with pink, red, and white, with every available surface and fixture covered in streamers, balloons, and heart-shaped cut-outs. The DJ had set himself up in an unobtrusive corner, although true to Lorelai's predictions, most of the evening no one actually danced, probably because the kids felt self-conscious around each other.

However, as the night wind to a close, the DJ began playing more mellow songs, allowing the assembled teenagers to practice the age-old art of one-on-one male/female social interaction of slow dancing. Luke noted with a bit of instinctive disapproval that April was asked to dance by a tall, well-dressed boy he did not recognize. He watched as they walked onto the floor and started swaying together in time with the music.

Lorelai followed his gaze and then looked back at him in amusement. "I know a way you can see them more clearly without looking like you're spying," she said. And without waiting for him to respond, she took his hand and gently led him onto the dance floor as well. He could have stopped her but he didn't, instead choosing to pull her flush against him as they settled into the dance, a movement that brought both disagreeable frowns and envious glances from the other chaperones stationed by the walls.

"You know, I heard somewhere that you were a good dancer," Lorelai remarked quietly to him.

"Yeah?" he asked, not bothering to hide his pleasure at the compliment.

"Better be careful," she teased. "Showing these kids how it's really done, might give them ideas…"

As if to demonstrate her very words, he spun her around in slow motion, earning looks of romantic approval from the nearby teenage girls and curious scrutiny from the boys. But Lorelai ignored them all, luxuriating in Luke's undivided attention after having been denied it for so long. As they continued dancing, he gazed at her with an expression of unguarded love and affection, something she knew he felt, had always felt, but had not allowed himself to express.

In some ways, the dance felt like their first, when he had asked her at Liz's wedding. That night, Lorelai knew that she had truly seen him for the first time, had recognized the passion and feeling that lay behind those soulful blue eyes. It scared her a little to see him so open, much as it had when he told her he was "all in" on their first date. But Lorelai was not scared anymore; she had not been for a long time. In fact, she felt more frightened by the possibility of never seeing him look at her like that again.

For his part, Luke simply gave himself up to his emotions for a time, letting himself get lost in the rhythm between them and the warmth of her against him. They could have been anywhere – the streets of Italy, a crowded New York restaurant, or even their living room at home. He could see only her, could think only of her. When the music finally stopped and the dance officially ended, Luke still felt as though he were under her spell, intoxicated by her very presence. She had enchanted him once again, and he willingly surrendered himself to the feeling.

The drive home was surprisingly quiet. April said little as she was too busy smirking to herself in self-satisfaction. Lorelai tried to engage them both in conversation, but eventually gave up the attempt when it became clear that neither had any desire to talk. She did sneak glances over at Luke when she thought he was not looking, smiling in feigned embarrassment when he caught her. After they dropped April off at home, he reached over to hold Lorelai's hand, giving her a tender smile as he did so.

When they reached her house, Luke turned the truck off and walked around to open her door. But as they headed towards her house, the familiarity of the scene struck them both with a force that it was impossible to ignore. Luke could not help but be reminded of the morning after Kirk had driven Taylor's car through the diner, the morning he had finally reconciled himself to 'jumping' and doing whatever he had had to do to keep her. That same morning she had told him those four simple words that ripped into him with so much pain she might as well have struck him.

Lorelai remembered as well, and by the time they reached her front door, she could not help but recall through vivid flashes the nights Christopher had bid her goodnight in that very same spot. She had not seen it then, or if she had, she ignored it. But when Chris had kissed her and she shut her eyes, she had wished it was Luke kissing her, whispering sweet words of love and devotion in her ear. Luke had always been with her – every moment a memory of him, a reminder of what she wanted back.

Of course, she knew then that she had burned her bridges without meaning to, hurt him without intending to do so. In her desperate attempt to escape the pain, she had caused even more, for both of them. She had never considered the possibility of a second chance with Luke. Perhaps that lack of hope was the only thing that kept her from going completely insane at first. But now, with Luke standing in front of her and looking deeply into her eyes, hope was the only thing tethering her to reality.

Luke hesitated for several seconds before moving forward and with deliberate slowness cupped her cheek with one hand. Lorelai automatically closed her eyes and leaned into his touch. And when he kissed her, she did not have to imagine he was someone else, that she was someone else. For one brief moment, they were who they had always been: friends and lovers.

When they separated, Lorelai found herself wanting more of him, body and soul, to return completely to what they once shared. Her need for him was real and immediate, like a physical pressure within her chest that she could no longer bear to live with.

"Do you want to come in?" she asked, then flinched involuntarily as she remembered saying those same words to Christopher. They sounded so trite and common, like she was suggesting something casual. She regretted speaking them almost as soon as they left her mouth.

Luke noticed her reaction as well, and the reason was easy for him to infer. He wanted so much to simply give into her soft entreaty and forget all the intervening unhappiness. But there was still something that weighed on him, something he had to know.

"Why did you go to Boston?" he asked.

His question caught her off guard, although she had been expecting it for some time. Unfortunately, Lorelai was no closer to finding an answer than she ever had been.

"I don't know," she told him. "I was upset and I thought we were over-"

Luke shook his head, not accepting the explanation she had given before. "If you thought we were over, why didn't you come home and cry and call me like you did before?"

"I don't know," she said again, more desperately than before. "But I didn't mean to hurt you. I wasn't punishing you."

"Weren't you?" he said, his words more of a comment than a question.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," Lorelai repeated painfully, letting the statement hang between for several long moments before continuing. "You're not going to be able to forgive me for this, are you?" she said finally in resignation.

"I just need to understand _why_…" he stressed.

Lorelai felt like a drowning person who had finally given up the will to keep struggling against the tide. Their romantic evening had been ruined. He was once again doubting her, asking her questions she could not answer with any satisfaction. It felt so much like 'one step forward and two steps back' that she wondered if they would ever be able to get back to where they had been before.

She shrugged and gave him an ironic half-smile. "I can't tell you, because I don't know. I can promise you it won't happen again, but I know you don't trust me yet, so you probably can't believe that yet. But I don't know what else to tell you, Luke. I don't know what else I can do…" She reached out a hand and placed it along his cheek, mimicking the way he had touched her earlier. "Luke, I love you. I really do. There's nothing more I can do to make you see that. So let me know if you ever decide that's enough."

As she went inside and closed the door behind her, Luke suddenly felt very cold and alone, as though he was letting something precious slip through his fingers.

* * *

"What time's the jousting?"

"Two o'clock."

"And the sword fighting?"

"Right after the jousting."

"What about the falconry exhibit?" April pursued. "What time does that start?"

"Would you just give her the schedule, TJ?" Luke growled, growing tired of their antics. They had been going round and round the entire drive to the renaissance faire grounds, TJ being too stubborn to give up the itinerary of events and April unwilling to let him win the contest of wills. However, while his brother-in-law's childish behavior irritated him, he found his daughter's to be somewhat endearing, considering he had always seen her act so grown up.

Thankfully, Liz had gotten sick of the back-and-forth as well, and she snatched the schedule out of TJ's hand and handed it to April. He glared at her in obvious disappointment, but she quickly distracted him by pointing to the baby sleeping in the car seat between them. Because Luke's truck was too small, they had taken her and TJ's car, allowing Luke to drive so that he could sit up front with April while they sat in the back with Gary.

Several weeks had passed since Liz's delivery, and as the recovery process had added to her cabin fever from the earlier bed rest, she insisted on a family outing. This decision coincided nicely with the opening of the Faire nearby. While she and TJ would not be joining the circuit any time soon, they did want to show off the baby to their friends and colleagues, as well as their niece, who Liz had previously promised to take to the faire anyway.

"I don't see why she gets to have the schedule," TJ whined. "She already has it memorized."

"Everyone in this car has it memorized," Luke retorted, having heard it repeated half a dozen times in the past half-hour. He quickly rattled off, "Juggling at eleven, dancing at noon, strong-man competition at one o'clock-"

"Oh, Hay Bale Bill is going to be competing this year," Liz cut in. "Ever since he and Grog Booth Annie split up, he's been focusing more on his career."

"That's… probably good for him," Luke managed as he pulled the car into a parking spot. "I didn't realize the two of them were together for that long."

"Oh yeah," TJ interjected. "They were hot and heavy after she dumped the fruit ice guy-"

"Well, he dumped her, really," Liz corrected, "when he heard about Bill. But after that, they were nearly inseparable."

As they climbed out of the car and started walking through the parking lot towards the faire grounds, April's asked, "What happened to them?"

"I bet Annie crawled into another tent with a jouster," Luke muttered.

"No, actually," Liz contradicted. "Bill got so suspicious about her spending time with his brother that he ended up pushing her away completely."

"Sounds like they weren't meant to be," he said decidedly.

Everyone was quiet for a moment until TJ said decisively, "No, Bill was just an idiot."

"What happened to Grog Booth Annie?" April pursued, fascinated with the story.

"Oh, she ended up _back_ with the Fruit Ice guy. They're actually down on a circuit in Florida," Liz said. She thought for a moment, then pursed her lips. "I want to go to Florida," she declared, looking at TJ. "Why don't we ever go to Florida?"

"Because it's… far away," he answered. "And there's too much sun. You know how badly I burn when I'm out in the sun too long."

"That's true," Liz conceded.

Liz and TJ spotted a friend they wanted to talk to, so they walked ahead with Gary in tow, allowing Luke and April to follow behind at a more leisurely pace.

"So…" April began, obviously wanting to say something but not sure how to bring it up.

"So…?" Luke echoed.

"Well, I was just going to say that it seemed like you and Lorelai had a nice time at the dance on Friday," she said.

He nodded slightly. "Um… yeah, we did."

His hesitation prickled at April's intuition and she prompted, "But?"

Luke sighed deeply, not wanting to discuss the issue with his daughter, mostly because he did not think it was appropriate to talk about such things with a thirteen-year-old girl. But at the same time, he had difficulty reconciling his own feelings about the situation. Lorelai was there – she was patiently waiting for him to work things out, despite everything they had already gone through after finding out about April. And he knew that she was allowing it because she felt guilty for sleeping with Christopher. Her guilt over that was obvious, like a scarlet letter she carried with her, tattooed under her skin and ever-present in her mind.

And yet, he was still having trouble forgiving her. The betrayal ran so deep, cut so jagged an edge in his heart that he simply could not force himself to trust her again. Although, paradoxically, he did trust her. Luke genuinely believed that she regretted both that night with Christopher and the rebound relationship she started with him afterwards. But somehow, he could not help but wonder whether she would do it again, if pushed hard enough.

"It's complicated," he told April after several moments of thought.

She snorted with the incredulity of the young. "That's just an easy way of saying you're afraid," she declared. Luke raised an eyebrow at her, both a question and warning. "You're in love with her," she explained. "You should just let yourself feel the way you want to feel. Stop fighting it."

"It's not always that simple," he told her.

She shrugged in response, clearly not convinced. "Sometimes," she conceded. "But sometimes it is."

Luke snorted at her vague certainty. "You learn that in one of those romance movies?"

"No," April said simply. "I learned it from you." He gave her a curious look that prompted her to explain, "You don't complicate things. You take people for who they are, especially Lorelai. I mean, on one level, you two have practically nothing in common. You don't even eat the same foods. But somehow you're perfect together, because you appreciate her for being herself. It's the same with Liz, and TJ, and even Kirk. You like them despite their flaws. You've just forgotten that with Lorelai."

Not wanting to continue the conversation, Luke quickly distracted his daughter with the sights and experiences of the renaissance faire, and she let the topic drop. But throughout the rest of the day, he found himself turning over her words in his mind. With so many reasons to distrust Lorelai and fear getting hurt by her again, it was difficult to focus on the one thing that could erase all that: he did love Lorelai Gilmore. And he knew that he always would.

* * *

Luke had little time to contemplate his relationship problems over the following week. As he limited Lane's duties at the diner to less stressful and strenuous activities (in particular, he had her handling almost all of his administrative and office responsibilities), he had to pick up the extra slack himself. And because he did not want Lane to think he had replaced her by hiring additional help, Luke found himself busy all the time.

On the afternoon of Caesar's day off, he was concentrating so hard on taking orders while simultaneously watching the kitchen that he did not even notice when Lorelai entered. At least, he did not notice her until she walked behind the counter to pick up the coffee pot. He was about to yell at her to wait until he could pour it himself when he saw her begin to fill not her own cup, but that of another customer.

Just as she had when his uncle had died and Luke needed help around the diner, she began winding her way through the crowd of customers, refilling coffee and taking orders. She was still wearing her good clothes from working at the inn all day, but she smiled and greeted people with the never-ending supply of energy for which she was so well known. When she brought him the orders in the kitchen, she only took a second to flash him a friendly smile before pinning the orders up for him to see and returning to the counter.

They worked just like that through the rest of the dinner rush, barely conversing at all except to pass orders and plates of food back and forth. At one point, Luke did stop her long enough to take an unused apron and tie it around her so that her work clothing would not get ruined. The act took only a second or two, but their eyes met and lingered for a moment before they were forced to return to work.

By the time the crowd began to thin out a little, it was nearly seven o'clock. Luke had spent most of the evening in the kitchen, but every once in a while he would stick his head out to check on Lorelai. She moved as though she were being paid for it, taking orders, handling the cash register, busing tables – anything that needed doing, she did without hesitation.

About that time, Lane came down from Luke's apartment, embarrassed that she had missed the dinner rush (having fallen asleep on the couch after updating the diner's books). Luke came out of the kitchen to assure her that everything was under control.

"Lorelai's here," she argued, obviously feeling guilty about her boss treating her differently because of the pregnancy. "I can still work. I'm not an invalid."

"Luke," Lorelai tried to interrupt, "That guy over there wanted extra fries with this."

"Just a second," he told her before turning back to Lane. "You're like, eleven months pregnant," he exaggerated in quiet, urgent tones. "You don't need to be running around on your feet all day. The last thing I need is for you to go into labor right here…"

Lorelai glanced between Luke and the man at the table who had practically bitten her head off about the fries. He was still glaring at her resentfully as she stood waiting for Luke, who had gotten into a full-blown argument with Lane about her work schedule.

Feeling impatient, Lorelai took the rapidly cooling plate and headed into the kitchen, already knowing where the stash of fresh fries was kept. While her ex-fiance had never allowed her to actually use the diner's stove (not that she wanted to), she had been a regular customer for so many years, she knew where to find everything.

Unfortunately, the one thing she was not prepared for was the grease-filled skillet sitting on the edge of the stove. Without even seeing it, she accidentally bumped into the pan, upending the grease onto her outstretched arm holding the plate of fries.

Luke heard her painful cry an instant before the plate and frying pan hit the floor, and he was by her side just as quickly. "Lorelai!" he exclaimed, needing only a second to take in the scene. "What are you doing in here?" he asked, even as he moved to examine her burned arm.

"I was just getting extra fries-" she began quietly before he cut her off.

"You know you're not supposed to be back here!" Luke practically shouted. But before she could respond, he was ushering her up to the apartment so that he could take a better look at her arm. "Lane, watch the counter," he called out.

"Luke, really, I'm fine. It's just a little burn," Lorelai tried to protest, but he had already gotten her to the top of the stairs.

"We need to put water on it," he said as he guided her swiftly to the bathroom. Once there, he gently took her arm in his hand and held it under a stream of cold water in the sink.

"It's fine, really," she said again. "The stove wasn't even on, so the grease wasn't that hot-"

Luke ignored her as he closely examined her skin, letting the water wash away the oily grease to reveal blotchy red spots where it had landed. He was careful not to touch the area, knowing how sensitive it would be. "It looks like you're going to get some blisters," he evaluated, already noticing the swelling on her arm.

"Shouldn't we get ice or butter or something?" Lorelai asked.

Luke shook his head vehemently. "No, no, no," he told her. "Absolutely not. Just hold your arm under the water for a while, then we'll wrap it in a wet cloth. If it still looks bad, I'll take you to the hospital."

Despite his words, Luke had not let go of her arm, holding it gingerly in both of his hands as he watched the water run across her burned skin. Logically, he knew that at most it was a second degree burn, one that would hurt for a while but would ultimately heal. But a deeper, more primal part of his brain began throwing out worse scenarios. What if the stove had been on and the grease had been hotter? What if it had splashed her face instead of her arm? What if a fire had started and she had really gotten burned?

He silently cursed himself for being so careless as to leave a pan of hot grease just sitting on the stove like that, where she so easily bumped into it. What if it had been Lane, in the delicate condition she was in? The more he thought about it, the more the possibilities began to panic Luke until the fear morphed into outright anger.

"What were you doing in the kitchen anyway?" he growled. "I've told you not to go back there. My insurance doesn't cover you."

Even though Lorelai knew he spoke out of concern, she could only focus on the irritation in his voice. "I'm sorry," she said. "I was just trying to help."

"You getting hurt doesn't help me," he declared, pulling her arm out of the sink. He reached for a wash cloth, quickly soaked it with water, then gently began to wrap it around her exposed arm. "Do you have any idea what could have happened to you?"

"Luke, I-" She tried to speak, to apologize again and explain why she had gone into the kitchen. But the words died on her lips as she noticed that Luke's hands, carefully holding the wash cloth to her arm, were physically shaking. His chest was heaving as though he was out of breath, and tiny beads of perspiration had begun to dot his forehead. He looked terrified.

"Luke, I'm okay," Lorelai said again, reaching out her other hand to take one of his. "Luke, really, it's okay. I promise. It doesn't even hurt anymore." But as she spoke, he refused to meet her eyes, staring instead at her arm. He looked so upset that it was beginning to really scare her. "Luke, this isn't anything. It's like a papercut. Well, maybe a little worse than a papercut, but still. It was just me being clumsy and being where I wasn't supposed to be, and doing what I wasn't supposed to do…"

Her voice cut out for a moment as she realized that the feelings Luke was struggling with had nothing to do with the burn on her arm and everything to do with them. He was still trembling with barely contained emotions, and Lorelai had to force herself not to simply wrap her arms around him in a gesture of comfort.

"Luke, I'm sorry," she told him, her voice shaking from the effort. "This wasn't your fault-"

"Yes, it was," he said meaningfully. He met her eyes this time as he stated, "I should have been there for you. You were trying to help me, and I wasn't there for you."

She paused. "We're not talking about my arm anymore, are we?" But before he could answer, she continued on. "Luke, I'm sorry I hurt you. I am so sorry. You don't know how sorry I am, how much I wish I could take it back-"

"Lorelai-"

"Wait, just let me say this." She looked down and closed her eyes as she took a deep breath. When she looked up again, she let him see the sorrow and remorse in her expression, the emotions she had up until that moment done everything in her power to hide. "I know you want a reason, and I really wish I could give you one. I could tell you that I was trying to punish you, that I did it because I knew you would feel betrayed. But I didn't. I don't know why I did it, but I didn't do it to hurt you. I wasn't… I wasn't even thinking about you. I mean, I was obviously thinking about you, but…"

She stopped for a second, finding it difficult to communicate with the knot in her throat. When she spoke again, it was with a shakier voice as she fought back the tears that stuck at the edges of her vision. "All I could think about was that we were over, that you didn't want to marry me. And that hurt so much that I… I just wanted it to stop hurting. I wanted to stop feeling anything at all. So I didn't think about what I was doing or where I was going. I didn't think about what I was doing to you, how much it would hurt _you_. I swear, I didn't do it to hurt you, Luke. That's all I can tell you. That, and how sorry I am. I am so very sorry. Please believe me," she begged.

Luke found himself listening to the emotion in Lorelai's voice as much as the words themselves. He had heard her speak with regret before, overcome by sadness or desperation. But he had never heard her sound so anguished, not even the night she had asked him to elope.

"I do," he whispered, and it was the truth. He did believe her. He did trust her. He did forgive her. And most of all, he did love her.

But looking down at her, he saw the moisture brimming at the edges of her eyes, making them a brighter, clearer shade of blue. Glancing down further, he was reminded of the burn on her arm, covered by the damn wash cloth. He peeled it back slowly to examine her skin again. Indeed, the red pink splotches had begun to blister in a few places, although not as badly as he had feared. The blemishes reminded him that she had gotten hurt while helping him, because she had once again gone out of her way to be there when he needed her.

It occurred to Luke that all of his indecision and "taking time to work things out" had just been his unconscious way of punishing her. Maybe some dark part of himself wanted her to prove her love by suffering through the same heartache and longing that he had felt after their break-up. He wanted to see if she really loved him as much as she said she did. The realization sickened him.

He felt a vivid flash of memory from that night, that terrible night. She had been crying then too, or on the verge of it. And she had gazed up at him with those same brilliant, blue eyes, asking him to love her and to take the pain away. Luke hated himself for pushing her to that point, and for not having done what she asked that night.

"Lorelai…" he began, but then stopped himself. Luke had no idea how to express to her what he was feeling in that moment. He did not know how to erase the months of blame and self doubt he had caused her. He was also terrified of hurting her further, of showing himself even more unworthy of her.

"Luke!" they both heard someone call from the door to the apartment. The moment between them was instantly broken as they each recognized the voice.

"Is that Jess?" Lorelai asked at the same time he was thinking it.

"Jess?" Luke called out as they left the bathroom. And indeed, his sister's son was standing in the kitchen area, a bag thrown haphazardly over one shoulder. "What are you doing here?"

The young man shrugged, taking in the scene between his uncle and Lorelai before answering, "Thought I'd come up to see the new baby. Then my mom told me you were pretty busy here at the diner, so I thought I'd drop by and see if you could use a hand for a while."

Luke looked surprised but pleased at the offer. "Yeah, sure. But what about your job in Philadelphia?"

Jess said casually, "They can do without me for a little while." Despite his easy-going attitude, he eyed Lorelai suspiciously, as though wondering what she was doing there. "I saw Lane downstairs. She seemed kind of short handed…" he began.

Luke quickly sprang into action. "Oh right, well… why don't you get settled in… I mean, you're staying here, right? Well, get settled in, and I'll run down and check on Lane-" He turned back to Lorelai. "Are you going to be okay until I get back?" he asked, nodding to her arm.

She gave him a smile and a dismissive wave with her other hand. "I'm fine. Go help Lane."

"You sure?" he confirmed. "I have some bandages in the bathroom…"

"I'll find them," she assured him. "Now go back downstairs. Jess can help me if I need anything. And we can… talk later."

Luke stared at her for a moment, almost losing himself once again in her gentle expression before nodding once, very slightly, and then turning to head downstairs. Once he was gone, the door shut behind him, Lorelai let the mask that hid her disappointment slip away as she focused on the ground at her feet. She had forgotten Jess was still standing there until he said, "So what's going on with you two?"

"Um… nothing," she managed, unable to put the status of their relationship into words, let alone words she felt comfortable articulating to Luke's angry nephew.

"Yeah…" Jess said skeptically as he draped his bag across the back of one of the kitchen chairs. "Right."

"Jess, look, this isn't any of your business-"

"None of my business?" he interrupted sharply. "That's funny, 'cause I seem to remember _everything_ being your business when it came to Rory's life."

"Rory's my daughter," she defended.

"And Luke's my uncle," he shot back. "And I don't want to see you tear his heart out again."

Lorelai sighed, too tired to argue with him. She was not certain how much he knew about her and Luke's break-up, but he obviously knew enough to hate her for it. It seemed an inescapable conclusion that she was fighting an up-hill battle when it came to getting Luke back. "Well, that makes two of us," she said softly.

Jess asked pointedly, "Do you love him?"

Without hesitation, Lorelai answered, "Yes, I do. I will _always_ love him, whether he believes me or not."

He folded his arms across his chest in a gesture of defiance. "Liz told me what you did," he stated. She nodded, unsurprised, but made no comment. "Don't you have anything to say about that?" he prompted, annoyed by her lack of response.

"That's between me and Luke," she said finally, her tone firm but resigned. She turned to go back into the bathroom in search of the bandages Luke had mentioned.

Jess watched her walk away, and as he did so he was reminded of the first night he had met her and how she had defended his uncle to him without a second thought. Over the years, he had seen the two of them circle around each other, fumbling towards a future that neither was sure how to reach. Part of him hated Lorelai for betraying his uncle the way she did, and Jess found it difficult to see beyond that anger.

But if he was honest with himself, he knew from what his mother had told him that Luke was also partially to blame for their problems. However, while Jess had never enjoyed the best luck when it came to women, he knew love when he saw it. And he had just enough idealistic optimism left to hope that was enough for them.


	11. Say Anything

**A/N:** Okay, at least one more chapter after this, and then probably an epilogue. I had intended this one to be the last 'real' chapter, but it ended up running longer than anticipated (they never do run short, I'm finding) and allowed me to break in a natural place. So any lack of resolution with this chapter was purely unintentional. I plan to have the next chapter up in the next couple of days, probably over the Thanksgiving weekend, barring any extenuating circumstances.

* * *

**Chapter 11: Say Anything**

Not wanting to get into another ugly conversation with Jess, Lorelai took the opportunity to slip downstairs and out of the diner while Luke was occupied with helping Lane close up. But of course, Luke immediately tried to follow, stopping her just short of the door as he insisted on checking her burn once again.

"I'm okay, see?" she said, holding up the bandaged arm. "I think I'm just going to get home, take some aspirin, and climb into bed. It's been a long day."

He nodded, remembering that not only had Lorelai worked at the inn all morning and afternoon, but she had also been helping him all evening in the diner. She did look tired, although he suspected that her exhaustion was as much emotionally related as physical. He knew he had been putting her through a lot lately, the stops and starts in their reconciliation as wearying for him as they were for her. But that was going to change, very soon.

"Good night," Luke said quietly. He wanted to touch her, but something held him back – a fear, more of hurting her again more than of being hurt. He wanted to be careful with her, to do things right this time. "I'll check on you tomorrow."

She stood still for a moment before giving him a small smile in return. For once, it did not touch her eyes. Instead, he saw in them little more than sadness and a hint of resignation. They were not Lorelai's eyes, usually so vivacious and full of enthusiasm. They were the eyes of the woman she had made herself into for him, giving him what he needed while she died a little inside, waiting.

She turned to leave, and he instinctively reached out a hand to graze her shoulder, the brief contact stopping her as surely as a brick wall.

"Lorelai," he began, trying to find the words.

But they were standing in the diner, with Lane behind the counter and Kirk at a corner table staring intently, like they were live entertainment. No, he wanted privacy to talk to her, to explain everything and make her understand. To say something then and there would be to cheapen the moment, and Luke very much wanted his moment with her.

"Thank you for… everything," he said. He realized how final that sounded when he saw the flicker of fear in her eyes.

And this time, he did touch her. He reached up to brush a stray hair away from her face, letting his hand gently brush against the skin of her forehead. It was the slightest caress, and yet he felt electrified from the contact. There was so much he wanted to convey, to tell her without speaking. Luke had never been one for big, public displays of affection. Perhaps that reserve made the ones they did share all the more poignant.

And when he touched her, Lorelai felt it too. He could see in her face the shift of her emotions back to something more open and hopeful. Unfortunately, the hesitance was back as well, like that of a wary animal casting sad yet loving glances at a cruel master. The analogy hit Luke full in the chest with the force of a physical object, and he let his hand drop back to his side.

"I'll check on you tomorrow," he promised her again, wishing he had the ability to say more with such inadequate words.

"Tomorrow," Lorelai echoed, nodding in acceptance.

As Luke watched her walk away, for the first time he felt his own inadequacies hold him in place and keep him from going after her. Her expression had pained him more than he wanted to admit, mostly because he saw his own failures mirrored back at him in the form of her unhappiness. It made him wonder if perhaps all of his uncertainty about her was a selfish way of denying his own culpability in their problems. After all, he had hurt her first – through long neglect rather than a quick betrayal. He supposed that he had even brought it on himself, pushing her past the point of all reason or rationality.

These thoughts stayed with him as he walked up to his apartment later and found Jess sitting at the table, reading a book and eating a sandwich. "Hey," he said to his nephew.

"Hey," the younger man replied, setting the book aside. "Looked like I was interrupting something earlier." Luke simply shrugged in a classic non-response. "How long has that been going on?" Jess asked.

"I don't know. A few weeks. A month or two." He could not quite put his finger on when he had started thinking about getting back together with Lorelai, only that somehow, it had seemed to become inevitable rather than a mere possibility.

"Things still seem… off, between you," Jess ventured.

"Yeah, well, we're still working on some things."

"Like the fact that she cheated on you?" he said bluntly.

Luke flinched, despising the rancor he heard in his nephew's voice, a sentiment he had caused just as surely as Lorelai had.

"Like the fact that maybe I'm no good for her and never have been," he said bitterly.

Jess snorted. "Wait, she sleeps with some other guy, and you're the one to blame? That's messed up, Luke."

Sighing deeply, he began, "I pushed her away. I kept her from April-"

"Yeah, but she _slept_ with _another guy_," he reiterated.

Luke paused, looking down at the table. He could see Lorelai sitting there, smiling in bliss as she ate a meal he had cooked for her or laughing at something he'd said. He could see her massaging his neck after a long day, then leaning over his shoulder to whisper tantalizing secrets in his ear. He could even see her on top of that table, her eyes glazed over with ecstasy as she clung to him in all-consuming passion. And there were no other images in between – only her and him, together. The way it ought to be.

"I don't care anymore," Luke stated, more to himself than to his nephew. "None of that matters anymore."

"Really?" Jess challenged.

He nodded slowly, as though testing the theory in his mind before he was able to pronounce, "Yeah, really."

The younger man cocked his head to the side, then snorted in acknowledgment. "So what are you waiting for, then?" he asked.

Luke sighed as he lowered him into the chair opposite Jess, leaning forward as he ran his along his forehead, up to the baseball cap on his head. He paused for a second, then removed the hat, turning it over in his hands to look at the black material. It was the Wolf Pack cap that April had bought him for his birthday at the hockey game, already well broken in through continued use. But despite the fact that it was a gift from his daughter, something he really loved, he just felt wrong wearing it.

"I'm not sure how to fix this," he admitted aloud.

Jess shook his head in confusion. "What's there to fix? Just go talk to her, tell her you want to get back together."

"No, it needs to be something more," Luke responded as he stared at the floor, unable to look at the other man. "This isn't just about me forgiving her and us moving on. That's not fair to her. Part of this is me and who I am, the way I acted with her, keeping her out of my life…" He stopped, searching for the right way to say what he wanted to say. "I didn't want Lorelai around April because I was afraid she'd see me fail as a dad, that she'd realize I wasn't good enough for her."

Jess looked at his uncle for a long moment as he considered what had been said. While they had not been close most of his life and they had certainly not seen eye-to-eye in many respects, he felt certain that he knew Luke about as well as anyone did, except of course for Lorelai. And beneath the rough veneer of that grumpy flannel-clad diner owner with a strong tendency to rant was a very simple man. He lived his entire life in a small town, pursuing the simple wishes and wants inherent in that existence. Jess could see how a woman like Lorelai, who tended to shine and captivate people with extraordinary ease (although Jess himself had never fallen victim to it), could make Luke seem as though she were out of his league. And yet, what his uncle did not see, the truth that was as plain as day, was that they were really both the same.

"That's total bull," Jess said finally. "Liz tells me every week on the phone how good you're doing with April. And Lorelai's a lot of things, but she's not stupid. She knows she's lucky to have you. She practically said so the first day I met her." This comment caught Luke's attention, and he looked up from the floor. "Look, I don't know what all happened between the two of you, but she loves you. And by the way you talk, the only thing holding you back is some vague fear of disappointing her. So just get over yourself already and do it. You won't know until you try."

Luke raised an eyebrow in amusement at his nephew's frankness. "When did you get so smart about this stuff?" he asked.

"Live and learn, man," Jess answered. "And don't forget those stupid self-help books you gave me."

He smiled a little in response, remembering the books well. They had helped him see what had been staring him in the face for so many years. And not only that, they had given him the guts to go after it. To go after her.

Jess stood up from the table and picked up the bag he had brought with him. "On second thought, I think I'll crash at my mom's place tonight. I'll probably get more sleep with a crying baby around than watching you try to figure out what to do about Lorelai. I'll be back in the morning to help at the diner. And I expect time and a half if you want me to fill in for Lane."

With that, he left Luke alone with his thoughts. He spent the next few minutes trying to distract himself – cleaning up around the apartment, washing dishes, and so forth. But eventually, everything was put away and the utter silence in the room pulled at his senses. He took a step towards the door, knowing exactly where he wanted to go, but he stopped himself before going further. Even though it was a Friday night, Lorelai would be asleep, he knew. She had looked exhausted when she left earlier. Better to let her get her rest and go see her in the morning, he decided.

Without further thought, he sat down on the couch and picked up the television remote, needing a distraction. He flipped it on and mindlessly began scrolling through the channels before he hit upon the interface channel with the DVD player. The title screen for one of April's movies was playing – _Forget Paris_. He did not recognize the name, but it had the guy from a comedy Lorelai had once made him watch about businessmen who took a vacation as cowboys. It was an actor he remembered liking, so he hit the play button and settled back on the couch, figuring that if nothing else the movie would drive away the interminable silence.

* * *

The next morning, Jess poked his head into the apartment to see Luke laying on the couch, his eyes barely opened but still glued to the television. A stack of DVDs sat on the table in front of him and a movie was still playing.

"Lane says you took the day off," the younger man noted, walking over to investigate what exactly his uncle was watching. "You're watching a Barbara Streisand movie?" he asked in disbelief.

Luke waved the remote around in the air as he answered in a tired voice, "It's one of April's. And there's no singing in this one. It's about this woman who doesn't think she's pretty, so she marries a boring college professor. But now she wants sex."

Jess nodded slowly, as though struggling to contain any number of mocking comments that the situation simply begged for. "And you're watching this because…?"

"Well, I watched the first one 'cause it was there," Luke said, sounding almost intoxicated from lack of sleep. "But parts of it made a lot of sense, so I picked up the next one. And that one was pretty good, so I kept going. And now…" He nodded helplessly towards the television. "I kinda want to know how it turns out."

"Okay, so… you've been watching chick flicks all night?"

Luke muttered a barely intelligible, "Yep."

"Did you fall and hit your head?" Jess demanded.

At this point, the older man pulled himself into a sitting position, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand as he did so. "Lorelai likes movies," he said simply, as though that explained everything.

"You realize this is insane, don't you?"

"Well, they're like the books," Luke said, sounding more lucid than he had previously. "They put things into perspective – the way women think, what they want…"

"There's a movie you should watch," Jess said.

"What?"

"_What Women Want_. Rory made me watch it with her three times…" He stopped speaking when he noticed Luke pick up a pad of paper and begin jotting down the title. Unable to contain himself further, he let out a chuckle and turned to leave. "Yeah, I think I'll just go down and give Caesar a hand so Lane can go home. She's looking pretty tired."

"Okay," Luke agreed, turning his attention back to the movie. "Tell her to get some rest."

Jess shook his head as he left, closing the door behind him. While he may not have understood his uncle's actions, he could certainly relate to the sentiments behind them.

* * *

When Lorelai had arrived home the night before, she was surprised to find Rory there, ready to spend the weekend with her. Even though Logan had gone to London and Rory had stepped down as editor of the paper, her college studies still kept her busy at Yale. So it was nice to have a genuine girl's night, like the old days.

Lorelai could tell that her daughter was having trouble figuring out what she wanted to do with her life. Get a job, continue her schooling, run off and join the circus… It was an exciting time for the young woman, certainly, but it was also a reminder to Lorelai that her daughter was all grown up. She had been at college for four years, but she came home on the occasional weekend and holidays, and she had never been more than a few hours' drive away. But now, there was no telling where she would end up. New York, perhaps. She may even move across the pond to be with Logan and look for a career in British journalism. _Very Bridget Jones_, she thought to herself.

And while Lorelai wanted her daughter to be happy and to have all the opportunities and experiences she never had, it saddened her to think that she would be without her little girl any more. The true force of that knowledge had certainly hit her before. Rory graduating college was an inevitability. But Lorelai had not considered for a long time the possibility of facing that eventuality by herself. At first, she had been distracted with starting the inn and dating Jason Stiles. Then, when she and Luke had gotten engaged, she had assumed that she would never need to be alone again. He would always be there with her, filling up that empty house with his comforting presence. If she was completely honest with herself, Lorelai may even have considered the strong role her and Rory's estrangement had played in prompting her to propose to him.

Then, when she and Luke had broken up, she had turned to Christopher. He was the old stand-by, the familiar partner in crime from her youth. And he promised to love her and wait for her. He was also Rory's father, finally stable and together enough to provide a life for his own young daughter. For a time, it had felt like kismet to Lorelai – all the signs pointing in the direction of the man she could have married twenty two years before. But most of all, she knew that if she was with Chris, she would not be alone.

Of course, all of that stopped mattering when Lorelai finally took a crystal-clear look at her life, examining it from the perspective of what she needed rather than what she thought she wanted. And she needed the man she was in love with. She needed the life she had dreamed of all those nights sleeping together in their bed, his arm around her waist and his ring on her finger. She did not want Luke back just to drive away the loneliness of Rory's absence. She wanted him for herself, to complete her existence and start the life she knew they were meant to have.

If she had to wait for him, she would. Impatience had cost her much in the past, the burn on her arm serving as a vivid reminder of that sentiment. She just could not help but fear the unspoken doubt that perhaps Luke would never be ready, that he would never be able to get over what she had done.

"Hey Mom, Lane just called," Rory said, walking into the living room where her mother was curled up on the couch. They had spent half the night and most of the morning watching movies and pigging out on junk food, just like the old days. No talk of boyfriends or the future – just who looked hotter as a barbarian, Brad Pitt or Mel Gibson, and how on earth Rachel Weisz managed to make a career out of her role in _The Mummy_.

"She said she got the day off, and so I thought I'd drop by and see her for a little while," Rory said. "Do you want to come?"

"No, you go ahead," Lorelai told her daughter, glad to hear that Luke was insisting that Lane take care of herself. "Tell her hello for me."

After Rory left, she settled herself back into the lazy day she had started, glad for the rest. Her arm still ached a little, but not enough to warrant going to a doctor. It felt more like a bad sunburn, the kind that made you feel hot and uncomfortable all over, no matter what you did to distract yourself.

She wondered when Luke would come over. He had told her the night before that he would come to check on her, and Lorelai knew that he had meant it. Something had shifted in him the previous evening, when she had told him she did not mean to hurt him. Whether it was for the better or for the worse, she could not say, only that she saw a hint of a decision in his eyes. Before Jess had interrupted them, she thought perhaps he was going to say something important, something with finality. But then he had retreated, leaving her to teeter on that ledge once again, her heart in her hands, wondering if the next time he would pull her back or push her over completely.

The phone rang before Lorelai's thoughts could become more maudlin or reflective. Unfortunately, she answered it without waiting to see who was calling, expecting it was Luke phoning to see how she was doing.

It was Christopher.

Her face fell in disappointment when she heard his voice, but she gave him a polite greeting anyway. He asked her how she was and she lied, telling him she was, "Great, never better." They talked about Rory a little, and how she was doing at Yale with a few shared regrets that their daughter was almost grown and about to graduate. But finally, Christopher came to the purpose of his call, mentioning the woman he had become involved with after Lorelai had broken up with him. Gigi's twenty-five-year-old nanny.

Apparently, in the short two-month span since their split, he and this woman had been seeing quite a lot of each other, first going to Paris to take Gigi to her mother. Then any number of other romantic dates and weekend getaways. "I think I'm falling for her, Lor," he confessed over the phone.

"That's… wonderful," she said, no other response coming to mind. "I'm happy for you, Chris."

"I just wanted to talk to you…" He paused, suddenly very serious. "I wanted to make sure that what you said before, about us never working out-"

"I meant it," Lorelai reiterated, although she did feel a strange sense of jealousy. Not jealousy over Christopher necessarily, but for that happy, in-love feeling she could hear in his tone. "You should move on with your life. Have fun, do what makes you happy."

"You know I'll always love you, right?" he asked.

She swallowed, trying to decide if she could honestly return the statement. But ultimately, she just said, "I know. Take care of yourself, Chris."

Lorelai hung up the phone feeling overburdened by the weight of her own mistakes. Her rebound relationship with Christopher was but one foolish example. Everything that happened with Luke was another. Jason, Max, Chris once again. She always found a way to mess things up, to lose the chance at a normal life.

Her own daughter's best friend was married to a wonderful, albeit moronic young man, and she was pregnant with his child. Lane was going to have a baby and a family and all the things she herself had only truly realized that she wanted over the past few years. She wanted another child. She wanted a marriage. She wanted the house her mother had picked out for her with stables and enough room for Rory when she came home to visit. But most of all, she wanted Luke, to share that life with him.

Lorelai had once dreamed about them together like that – married and pregnant. Well, she had been the pregnant one, but she felt certain he had assisted with that outcome. And he had made her breakfast and hid her coffee, even though he knew she would find out. Then he had kissed her before leaving for work. The dream had been of a simple life, but a beautiful one. And although she had experienced aspects of that vision when they were together, it had always remained largely just that for Lorelai: a dream.

One thing was clear, however. Luke was the only man with whom she wanted to share that dream, that life.

* * *

"That'll be twelve dollars and eighty-five cents," Kirk pronounced.

"Twelve dollars?" Luke exclaimed. "That's extortion."

"There's a five dollar delivery fee."

"You said you deliver. You didn't say anything about charging for it," Luke said, glaring at him.

"You didn't ask," Kirk replied, deadpan. "Besides, I have to pay for my expenses."

"What expenses? The video store is a hundred feet from the diner. You walked down the street."

But the other man simply shrugged and said, "Fine, if you don't want them, I know the Widow Tillman would love to see some of these." He glanced down into the bag of DVDs he was holding before reading off a few of the titles, "_What Women Want_, _Sleepless in Seattle_… Oh, _The Lake House_. That's a good one. You know, that one kind of reminds me of you and Lorelai…"

"Just give me the movies, Kirk," he growled, shoving a few bills at him before grabbing the bag out of his hand.

"What, no tip?" he said, insulted. Rather than respond, Luke simply closed the apartment door.

As he moved to put the movies on the coffee table, Luke picked up his empty mug and headed for the kitchen. He had never been particularly fond of coffee, but it did have the benefit of giving him an added caffeine jolt, something that was particularly useful considering that he had not slept for over thirty-six hours. And while he still found the substance disgusting as well as unhealthy, it reminded him of Lorelai. That was probably the main reason he drank it, letting the bitter liquid slip across his tongue and fill his senses, the way she used to.

A moment later, there was a knock on the door. Luke turned, but before he could answer, it opened a crack and Jess peeked his head in. "You're not dressing up in girls' clothes or anything, are you? Kirk just left, muttering something about not getting a tip..." he asked sarcastically. The comment was not dignified with a response.

"Everything going okay downstairs?" Luke inquired, feeling slightly guilty about having shirked his responsibilities all day. But, on the other hand, the two of them had already worked out an arrangement paying well above the usual rate, something Jess was not adverse to in any way. While his job in Philadelphia was enough to live on, earning a little extra cash in advance meant the difference between going to bed exhausted at night and having the time and energy to work on his latest novel.

"Yep, everything's fine. But I've gotta tell you, letting Lane go home today was a smart idea."

"Why's that?" Luke asked.

"Just got a call downstairs from Lorelai. She said Lane went into labor this afternoon and probably won't be back at work for a while."

Luke did not stop to think, but instinctively headed for the door, grabbing his coat as he did so. "They're at the hospital?" he paused to confirm.

"Yeah. Lorelai and Rory drove her and that guy she married," Jess told him. "Hey, are you going to finally talk to her or what?" They both knew which 'her' he meant.

Luke looked between his nephew and the pile of movies he had just watched, then to the half-empty cup of coffee sitting on the counter. He had all the answers he needed. The doubts had been silenced, the fears put to rest. All that was left for him was to go get the girl. "Something like that," he said before leaving.


	12. The Goodbye Girl

**A/N: **This chapter's a little long – they just wouldn't stop talking! Thank you to everyone who has reviewed (every review makes my day that much better), and special thanks to Makita for being my beta.

Just a note – I started this story after episode 7.02, so I decided not to go back and make Lane have twins. Hopefully we'll get to see that particular anvil played out on the show.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 12: The Goodbye Girl **

"Where's Lane?" Mrs. Kim demanded as she rushed down the hallway. "Is she okay?"

Lorelai knew that Rory and Zack had tried to call her first, but when they could not reach her they had called Lorelai for a ride to the hospital instead. "Lane's fine," she assured the frantic mother, then pointed to the delivery room. "She's with the doctor and Zack-"

However, Mrs. Kim did not even slow down to hear the rest before barreling past her into the room.

Despite her fears and qualms about childbirth in general, Rory had faithfully stayed by her friend's side, providing support for not only Lane but also for Zack. With so many people crammed into that tiny delivery room, Lorelai chose to wait outside in the hallway for any word. She knew that the due date was at least three weeks away, making the baby's birth a little early, but not frighteningly so.

No sooner had Lorelai decided to go for coffee and begun heading down to find the cafeteria when another voice called after her.

"Lorelai!"

Turning, she saw Luke striding towards her looking almost as frantic as Mrs. Kim. Not only did he have dark circles under his eyes, but he also seemed to be wearing the same blue flannel shirt she had seen him in the day before. She was too preoccupied with the crazed look in eyes to notice that he wore his familiar blue baseball cap rather than the black one April had given him.

"Lane's doing fine," she told him immediately, figuring that her phone call to the diner had induced him to drive all the way to the hospital. "The baby's a little early, but I think she should be okay-"

Once again, Lorelai's statement about the girl's condition was cut off. However, unlike Mrs. Kim, Luke ignored the delivery room completely and continued walking towards her. He did not stop until he was inches away, and even then she barely had time to register his hands cupping the sides of her face before his lips were on hers, warm and insistent.

Lorelai instantly flashed back to their first break-up and the passionate reunion a month later when he showed up at her front porch. When she opened the door, he had simply stepped forward and swept her into his arms, letting his mouth tell her without words how much she meant to him. Their estrangement had been so unnecessary and ridiculous that all thoughts of it had immediately fled from her mind like doves startled into flight.

This time, the kiss was more gentle and hesitant. Luke simply let his lips caress hers without demand, as though reveling in the light touch. He held her face so softly that she could feel his hands trembling against her skin. And yet, despite the cold weather outside, Lorelai knew from the heat radiating from his body that Luke did not shake from the temperature. After a moment she considered far too brief, she felt him pull away from her and let his arms drop to his sides.

Lorelai opened her eyes and saw him studying her for a reaction. Not taking the time to analyze the situation, she said the first thing that came to mind. "You drank coffee today," she declared in disbelief.

Luke glanced at the floor nervously for a second before acknowledging, "Yeah, well… I needed the caffeine and I was out of tea."

A hundred questions were running through her head at that moment, all jumbled and bumping into each other, confusing her as much as Luke's actions. In the end, she settled on something basic. "Why?" she asked.

"The coffee reminded me of you. And I needed the caffeine because I haven't slept since yesterday. I just spent the last day watching every girl movie I could get a hold of," he informed her, building up speed as he spoke. "And I'm not a movie guy. You know this. You've known this ever since we first met. I'm not a movie guy, but I watched every one of April's and then I called Kirk to bring me some more."

"Luke…" she began softly, not sure how to respond to this sudden outburst. Of all the things Luke could have come to her to talk about, his daughter's DVD collection seemed an unlikely choice. But he kept going.

"I'm not a movie guy, but I started watching them because they reminded me of you, and of how you would think, and of how you make me feel whenever we're together," he said, pausing only for a second as he reached out to put his palms against her shoulders, lightly holding her in place in front of him. "Lorelai, I'm sorry for what I've put you through. I'm sorry for all of it, and I wanted to tell you... I love you. I love you more than I can ever put into words. That's something you should hear _every_ day of your life, and it's not something you should ever have to question."

Lorelai opened her mouth to speak, but Luke quickly brought up one finger and touched it against her open lips in a gesture of silence. "I know I probably sound crazy right now 'cause I haven't gotten any sleep. And I drank two cups of that disgusting stuff you love so much – which will probably take a few weeks off my life - but… I wanted you to know that if you will give me another chance, I'll be the movie guy. I'll be whatever guy you want me to be because I can't stand not having you in my life anymore. I mean _really_ in my life.

"I miss having you there when I wake up in the morning. I miss making you dinner while you tell me about whatever Michel did to annoy you that day, and then watch you eat ice cream out of the tub even when I get you a bowl. I miss Paul Anka and all his little quirks and the stupid tricks you teach him. Remember when I told you before that my life isn't real unless you're there? That's still true. Every day, I think of a dozen things I want to tell you or show you or hear you say. And I just can't stand not being with you any more.

He continued in earnest, "I know things got screwed up, and I know a lot of that was my fault. We both made mistakes, and I see that now. I've been keeping you at arm's length, acting like you have to prove something, but you don't."

Luke looked down, suddenly conscious of the fact that he was indeed holding her shoulders at exactly that distance. He reluctantly let his hands slide down her arms to grip her elbows, careful of the arm he knew must still be sore. Taking a small step forward, he was about to speak again when Lorelai interrupted, her voice cracking with emotion.

"You said before-"

"I don't care what I said before," he argued.

"But, Luke-" Lorelai began again, taking a faltering breath, "What I did… I _hurt_ you. I didn't mean to, but I hurt you – a lot. I know I did, and I know why you've been having trouble getting over that and trusting me again-"

"I trust you," he contradicted fiercely. "I don't trust myself any more, but I do trust you. I think that's what has been holding me back for so long. I don't ever want to see you the way you were that night you wanted to elope. You shouldn't have to beg for what you need from me. I should know. I mean, I _used to_ know – I used to know how you were feeling even before you did."

"You still know me," she said tenderly. "You know me better than anyone." While she said it without thinking it through, she realized a second later that the statement was true. He did know her better than anyone – better even than Christopher had. And possibly, although it was difficult for her to admit, better than Rory did anymore as well.

Most of the time, Luke could sense her true emotions, the moods that she hid beneath that top level of wise-cracks and mindless banter. Everything had gone wrong when that intuition faltered, when the situation with April had distracted him to the point that he no longer was able to see her as clearly. She did not tell him about her unhappiness and he did not ask. They had both relied on the unspoken understandings that had been the foundation of their friendship, and that reliance had failed them. But despite the months of hurt feelings and sleepless nights, despite the break-up and the slow, dizzying way they had been circling each other ever since, they were still the same people.

Luke was still the careful, slightly insecure man who had been jealous of her ex-boyfriend's presence at the Dragonfly opening. Lorelai was still the woman who pushed too hard when she was afraid of losing him, like she had in Doose's and in the street outside the diner. But in spite of that, they were still the same two people who had stood under that chuppah so many years ago, each wondering what it would be like to explore the forbidden. They were the same friends who had fallen in love, sidestepping the many obstacles in their way: weeks spent apart, nosy townspeople, interfering relatives, and their own fears and misgivings.

"I don't want you getting hurt again," Luke said after a moment, looking down at her arm as he did so. While her sleeve covered the burned area, he knew it was there, as conscious of the tender flesh as Lorelai herself. She knew that he meant more than just the burn. He had already told her his regrets about how he had acted after finding out about April. But for the first time, she started to understand exactly how far his distress over the situation extended, the doubts about his own ability to give her the things he thought she needed.

"That's funny," she said, although her tone was far from being amused. "I was thinking the same thing about you."

"We hurt each other," he sighed, acknowledging what she had done but wanting to absolve her of blame. Torturing her with guilt did no good. It only filled them both with shame they could do nothing about. After so many months of trying to figure things out, Luke had finally come to the realization that forgiving her was not a foolish risk, but rather a new beginning. Besides, the act had occurred in a specific context, a situation he himself had allowed to get out of control.

"But it doesn't have to be that way any more," he told her. "I can do better. I can try harder. I don't know if I can give you everything you need, but I will do every damn thing in my power to make sure you get it. I will be the movie guy, if that's what you want. I will be whatever you want, whatever you need me to be. Just tell me and I'll do it," he pleaded.

Luke had not meant to sound so desperate. Part of him felt dishonest appealing to Lorelai when he was still unsure about his ability to make her happy. But a deeper, more primal side could not help but reach out for her. He felt as though in the months since their break-up he had been slowly starving to death in her absence, and she had suddenly reawakened his appetite. As selfish as it seemed to him, he needed her, regardless of what he could offer her in return. He would certainly give her everything he had, without question. But he could not bring himself to push her away again, even if he justified it as being for her own good.

Lorelai took a shuddering breath, too stunned by his words to respond immediately. Instead, she reached up to wrap her arms around his neck with excruciating slowness. Luke stood completely still, allowing her to mold her body against his and rest her head on his shoulder as he let his own hands drop down to encircle her waist. She could feel his thundering heartbeat even through the layers of his clothing, finding comfort in the rhythm.

After several moments of gently holding him, Lorelai felt something inside of her snap – like a house of cards collapsing in on itself. Letting out a quiet sob, she tightened her grip, pulling her against him as forcefully as she could. "I need _you_," she whispered finally. "And I don't want you to be anyone but who you are."

Luke clung to her in return, letting waves of relief and joy wash over him. Ever since New Year's Eve when she told him she would wait, he had known that she would take him back. So her acceptance came as no surprise. However, the ferocity of her embrace and the certainty in her voice reassured him that he was doing the right thing. With the deep love that they shared came the capacity for pain, both giving it and receiving it. And while Luke wanted to experience neither, he knew that it was a risk that must be borne if they were to try again. But he did want to try.

* * *

They sat together in the hospital waiting room for hours, each reminded of being in that exact position a month before as they waited for Liz to give birth. But this time, they talked mostly about their relationship, their concerns and hopes for the future. For once, no topic was off limits as they discussed everything from Luke's feelings of inadequacy with his sudden fatherhood to Lorelai's impulsive rebound fling.

Sitting beside each other in the barely padded waiting room chairs, Luke held one of her hands in his, resting it on his knee as he traced patterns against her fingers. He had not been able to let her go since arriving, the need to feel her pressing on him with undeniable urgency. Lorelai allowed herself to bask in the attention, having been denied his unique brand of intense affection for so long. Of all the men she had ever been with, Luke always made her feel special just for being herself. She could be as silly or serious as she wanted, and he would keep up with her. No pretenses were needed, no displays of false cheerfulness to cover her real feelings. With Luke, she could simply… be.

And yet, having him there with her, touching her in such unrestrained warmth and adoration, she could not forget the circumstances that had led to their separation. In particular, the words he had spoken over Thanksgiving repeated in her mind, an unwelcome reminder of the pain she had caused him. He had been so angry, so hurt and accusatory despite the months since their break-up. She still wondered how he could simply let go of those feelings, as he said he had. Even with him there, looking at her with those deep blue eyes of his, she wondered if it really was possible for them to put the past behind them and move forward. It just sounded too good to be true.

"Luke," she said quietly, looking down at his hand covering hers. "I know it doesn't change anything. But I just wanted to tell you…" She paused, taking a deep breath, forcing herself to look up and meet his eyes. "I need you to know how sorry I am."

He nodded carefully, accepting the statement without question. "I know," he assured her.

"No, I don't think you do."

"Lorelai-" he began, but she cut him off.

"No, I want to say this."

"You've already said it – several times," Luke stressed. "You don't have to keep apologizing."

"Yes I do," she said forcefully, pulling her hand away from him. But as he realized what she was doing, he quickly reached out and reclaimed it, then took the other so that his fingers could trap both of her palms in a firm yet soothing grip.

"No, you don't," he stated, filling each word with meaning as he looked into her eyes with such intensity that she had trouble breathing.

She could feel the emotion building up in the back of her mind, and her throat began to constrict as she spoke. "Luke, I believe everything you've been saying. And I know you mean it. But I just don't know how you can forgive me for this – not that I blame you. I can't forgive me for it either, but-"

"Lorelai…"

"I know it's always going to be there. You're always going to wonder about me now and doubt whether I'm really committed to you. I understand that, I do. I just want to make sure we're open about it."

"I am being open," Luke said, somewhat confused and slightly irritated.

She could feel moisture beginning to squeeze its way out of the corner of her eye. Afraid she would not be able to say everything she needed to before the tears overcame her, she began speaking faster. "No, I know. I mean… I don't want you to pretend like you've forgiven me if you haven't. It's okay if you haven't. I know it's going to take a long time to regain your trust. That's okay, I accept that-"

"Lorelai, I have forgiven you," he told her. "I forgive you, and I trust you, and I love you so much it hurts…"

As though to punctuate the sentiments, he leaned forward and kissed her gently. At first, he simply let his lips slide over hers, appreciating the way her bottom lip quivered in response to him. But then her mouth parted slightly in invitation, and, needing no further prompting, he deepened the kiss, bringing one hand up to grasp the back of her neck.

While they had kissed a few times since breaking up, this time Luke let passion completely overtake him as he plundered her mouth, completely disregarding the fact that they were sitting in a hospital waiting room surrounded by nosy onlookers. All he could concentrate on was how good she felt against him, as pliant and willing as she had ever been. But when he moved his hand to stroke her cheek, the warm wetness there brought him up short and he pulled away.

The tears in her eyes made them look an even brighter shade of blue, if such a thing was possible. But when she smiled, she looked absolutely radiant. Grinning back at her, Luke used his thumb to wipe away the dampness, his palm absorbing the salt water trails that had made lines on her cheeks. And when he was done, he brushed a few stray hairs back, tucking them behind one ear as he leaned forward to press a shy kiss to her temple.

"Hey Mom, I'm not sure how long this is going to take-" Rory's voice cut off abruptly as she took in the scene in front of her. The couple turned in unison, somewhat shocked at the sudden interruption until they both remembered exactly where they were. Lorelai was the first to recover, letting go of Luke's hand as she stood up to walk over to her daughter.

"How's Lane doing?" she asked.

"She's good. The doctor said she's progressing slowly, but everything's on schedule." Rory glanced over her mother's shoulder and added in a friendly tone, "Hey, Luke. I didn't know you were here."

He stood up as well and approached slowly as he said, "Yeah, I thought I'd stop in for a bit, see how things were going…"

"I'm sure Lane will appreciate your concern," she said, feeling certain she understood his true motivations for coming to the hospital.

"Yeah, tell her I said 'hi' or 'keep it up' or… whatever you say to women who are in labor," he concluded in embarrassment.

Rory could not resist having a little fun at his expense. "Do you want to come in and tell her yourself? I'm sure she wouldn't mind. Zack and Mrs. Kim are already in there…"

The expression of terror that crossed Luke's face was reward enough, and even Lorelai struggled not to giggle in response as she noted how wide his eyes grew at the suggestion. "No, no, that's okay," he said quickly. "I think I'll just wait out here with your mom."

"Okay, if you're sure…"

"Very sure," he guaranteed.

"Let us know if Lane needs anything," Lorelai said. "And tell her to squeeze someone's hand if it hurts. Somehow sharing the pain makes it a little more bearable."

"Will do," Rory promised before returning to her friend's room.

Lorelai glanced over at Luke, unable to keep herself from smiling at the blissful feelings that had enveloped her. She could not remember the last time she had felt so happy – a year or more, at least. Suddenly, it seemed as though everything were right with the world again. She was standing in a hospital corridor with the man she loved, waiting for a baby to be born. What could be more hopeful?

"I thought Rory got freaked out about people giving birth," Luke said, turning so that they could sit back down. As they took the few steps towards the uncomfortable hospital chairs, he automatically touched the small of her back, unable to resist the contact.

"Um… yeah, she does," Lorelai answered, momentarily distracted. Having been apart from him for so long, it felt odd to experience so many public displays of affection from her former fiancé. Certainly, he had never been above touching her, but Luke had always tended to act more reserved when others could see him. She never knew whether that was just his private nature or something he did on purpose to avoid unwanted attention from onlookers. "But this is Lane, and I think she made some kind of promise to be there with her. I'm sure Mrs. Kim and Zack are doing their best, but I know I wouldn't want either of them around if I was in labor."

Luke nodded in amusement, but then she saw his expression go blank in the way it did when he became deep in thought. It did not take much to divine what he was thinking about.

"It must have been tough going through that by yourself," he remarked, surprising her. She thought he would have been lamenting having missed April's birth, or even thinking about some yet-to-be-conceived, future children.

"It wasn't so bad," she lied. "Certainly not among my best moments, but I got through it. And maybe next time, things will be different." Realizing what she had said, Lorelai instantly began to back-track. "I mean, if there is a next time… I'm not saying there will be one necessarily or that there needs to be one. Only, if there is, maybe it'll be different. Or not."

The edges of Luke's mouth rose in the beginnings of a smile, the kind she had only seen him give to her when she was babbling her way into or out of some verbal mess. "I know what you mean," he told her. "And I have to ask – do you want there to be a next time?"

The question slipped from him so quickly that she did not have time to gage whatever feelings of his were fueling it, either hope or dread. She sighed, knowing her answer but indecisive about sharing it.

"I guess it depends," she said finally.

"On what?"

"On who'll be in that room holding my hand. And… whether it would be by choice or just obligation."

Luke took a few seconds to consider his reply, using the time to carefully study the floor at his feet. But as he looked up, there was no hesitance in his voice. "Kids or no kids, I want to be with you. And if you did want there to be a 'next time,' you couldn't stop me from being in that room and holding your hand."

She ducked her head at the intensity of his words, feeling a little overwhelmed by how open and honest he was being. Even after they had gotten engaged, they rarely talked about their feelings. She could count on one hand the number of times they had exchanged genuine 'I love you's, and that included the two times she had told him right before giving him the elopement ultimatum.

"That's good to know," Lorelai said.

* * *

They spent much of the rest of the afternoon waiting for Lane to deliver, getting intermittent updates from Rory. Occasionally when a contraction was especially intense, they heard the young woman cry out through the wall, causing Luke to cringe uncomfortably and Lorelai to pat his hand in reassurance. While they would have rather left and found a more comfortable place to spend some time together, they also felt it would be in poor taste to leave for such an obvious reason.

When they were not talking, they simply sat together, Lorelai resting her head against his shoulder as he flipped through some old magazine or another. At first, she thought it would be strange, slipping back into their old relationship roles; but it was not strange in the slightest. Instead, she felt free and giddy, like she had just avoided something horrible and landed in something wonderful at the same time. It felt just like falling in love with him the first time, except with a newer, more intense level of anxious anticipation and breathless excitement. But it also felt warm and familiar, like an old movie watched so many times that you could say the lines right along with the actors.

That thought reminded her of something Luke had said earlier. "So you stayed up all night watching chick flicks, huh?" she asked, breaking the easy silence that had settled between them. She could almost see his skin blush a brighter shade of pink.

"Um… yeah," he said.

"What did you watch?" she asked, forgoing the more obvious questions of, "Why?" and "Did hell freeze over when I wasn't looking?"

"You know all those DVDs April left at my apartment? I watched those."

"_All_ of them?" Lorelai demanded, incredulous.

"Yep."

"Luke, she had a dozen hard-core, classic romances there." She remembered the collection quite well from the night they had watched _Planet of the Apes_ at his apartment. It was almost uncanny how his daughter liked so many of her own favorite movies.

"Trust me, I know."

Lorelai grinned at him with impish delight, knowing that below that rough exterior, he enjoyed the teasing. "Which one did you like best?" she persisted.

"I don't know. They were all good."

"_Luke_…" she whined.

He paused for a moment, giving it a little more thought as his tired memory searched for an image that stood out in particular.

"I liked the one with all the people who knew each other somehow, but you didn't find out how they were connected until the end." Seeing Lorelai's forehead crinkle in thought as she tried to place the movie from his description, he added, "The one with that funny news guy you like, somebody-Stewart. The one that isn't Captain Picard."

"Jon Stewart."

"Yeah, him."

She thought for a moment more before deducing, "Oh, _Playing by Heart_. I love that movie, even though Gillian Anderson was kind of annoying."

"Which one was she?" he asked.

"The woman Jon Stewart dated."

"Ah. She looked familiar for some reason…"

"Agent Scully on the X Files."

"The what files?"

He looked confused by the reference, but genuinely inquisitive about its source. It suddenly occurred to Lorelai that he had promised to make himself over into a 'movie guy,' if that was what she wanted him to be. But as she considered it, she realized that she did not need him to be a movie person. Luke did not have to be interested in all the things she was interested in or understand all the references she made. She was not attracted to him because of his ability to quote Audrey Hepburn or appreciate the subtle distinctions between _The Breakfast Club_ and _Sixteen Candles_.

No, she loved Luke for a million other reasons. The way he cared about her health but let her eat unhealthy food anyway. His tireless dedication to family and friends, even when they drove him crazy. Refusing to participate in 'town events,' but doing so because she asked him. All the years he stopped by to fix something at her house, even when she had not requested the help. The fact that he kept his father's store just the same, except for turning it into a diner. The slightly defeated tone his voice reached as he was ending a rant. The love she saw in his eyes whenever he mentioned his daughter. The easy, open way he had always cared about Rory.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "And you don't have to watch those movies just to please me. I'm okay with you not being a 'movie guy.'"

"Yeah?" he asked, sounding slightly relieved.

"Unless you _like_ watching them…"

Luke shrugged in response. "They're not so bad. Just not all in a row."

"That's right, I forgot. You haven't slept in two days," she said, quickly sitting up. "Do you want me to take you home so you can get some rest?"

"No, I'm fine," he answered, although she could see the fatigue in his face. For a man who went to bed at nine o'clock, Luke was very used to getting his full eight hours a night.

Luckily, Rory chose that moment to come out of the delivery room. Previous updates had put Lane at fully dilated and ready to push. So the wide smile on Rory's face betrayed her even before she said, "It's a boy!"

The next hour involved a lot of cooing over the baby and a quick visit with the new mother, who looked exhausted but happy - and not nearly as terrified as everyone anticipated she would be. In fact, every time Lane held her new son, she seemed more and more at peace with the whole idea of motherhood.

It was nearly three in the morning by the time Luke, Lorelai, and Rory arrived back in Star's Hollow. Too tired to risk driving himself home, Luke left his truck at the hospital and promptly fell asleep on the ride home, his head pressed against the passenger side window. Rory took the opportunity to conduct a whispered inquiry of her mother about what was going on between the two of them. All Lorelai could tell her was that they were back together, and that no matter what, she was not going to screw it up this time.

"Do you want me to help you take him up to the diner or would you rather drop me off at the house first before taking him home?" Rory asked with a knowing grin.

"Why don't I stop at the diner and then see if Luke needs help up to his apartment," Lorelai suggested, not wanting to be presumptuous about giving him un-asked-for assistance.

"He's out cold, Mom. He's going to need help," she insisted.

"No he's not," Luke contradicted tiredly, his eyes still closed. "And he doesn't like being talked about like he's not in the room."

"We're in a car, hon," Lorelai corrected, letting the endearment slip off her tongue without thinking about it.

"Same thing," he mumbled.

But when they arrived at the diner, he did take Lorelai up on her offer to walk him up to his apartment. Rory flashed her a mischievious grin before getting into the driver's seat and saying that she'd see her at home later, making sure to emphasize that how much later was up to Lorelai.

"She's as bad as Miss Patty," Luke muttered as they made their way through the darkened diner, one arm slung haphazardly over her shoulder for balance. Lorelai felt certain that if he were left to his own devices, he would slide into a chair and sleep the entire night with his head slumped over one of the tables.

"If she were as bad as Miss Patty, she'd have driven us to Atlantic City and taken us to one of those drive-through all-night chapels," Lorelai joked.

"…today's March third… guess Patty won the bet…" she heard Luke say, half-under his breath. "…not a bad idea anyway…"

"What's not a bad idea?" she asked, curious.

"But not Atlantic City," he continued, not even registering her question in his fatigued state. "I like Maryland. We could go to Maryland and get married."

By this time, they had reached the top of the stairs. Lorelai would have been more distracted by Luke's fatigue-induced, uninhibited ramblings if her attention was not drawn to the note taped on the door. As it was, she chalked up his inadvertent proposal to lack of sleep.

_Luke, You owe me big for helping Caesar close up. Hope Lane's doing okay & if you didn't talk to Lorelai, I am so going to kick your ass. –Jess _

She smiled as she took down the note and let them into the apartment, quickly guiding Luke to the bed. It did not take much prompting to get him out of his shoes, although he argued with her about changing from his jeans into one of his usual pairs of sweatpants. But the clothing switch served to help wake him up a little, at least enough for him to wrap his arms around her and pull her onto the bed next to him. He was simply too exhausted to do more than that.

"Luke," she whispered, unable to stop smiling. "Do you want me to stay the night?"

"Mmm…" he answered in what she interpreted to be an affirmative as he tightened his grip on her waist. "…go to Maryland tomorrow…"

As she fell asleep wrapped in his embrace, Lorelai let herself relax in a way that she had not been able to in a very long time. Gone was the mask of indifference and forced cheerfulness that she had made herself wear for the sake of everyone around her. Her fears and self doubts had been stripped away like an old layer of paint, leaving her feeling fresh and unencumbered by the past. She had Luke's arms around her again, and all was right with the world.

* * *

After sleeping through the rest of the morning and straight through to late afternoon, Luke woke up to find Lorelai curled up on his couch wearing one of his flannel shirts and watching a movie as she munched on a snack from his refrigerator. Climbing out of his bed, he padded across the apartment floor and took the place next to her, putting one casual arm around her shoulders.

"What'cha watching?" he asked sleepily.

"_Sleepless in Seattle_," she answered, smiling as he tried to restrain a yawn. "You rented it, so you can't complain about it being a 'chick flick.' Besides, it's a classic."

"What's it about?"

"This woman who hears a man's voice on the radio and just knows that they belong together. They never really meet until the very end, but you can tell they were just meant to be."

"Sounds sappy," he grumbled, but settled in to watch the rest of the movie with her anyway. Though mutual unspoken agreement, they curled against each other on the couch, both wanting to simply enjoy the intimacy of touch. However, as the movie played out in front of them, both felt the re-emergence of thoughts and feelings long buried during the course of their separation. By the time the credits rolled, neither of them felt particularly tired any more.

Luke reached across her for the remote to turn off the television set, reveling in the quiet sigh that escaped her lips as he shifted against her. However, she groaned in disappointment when he sat up completely, then got up from the couch. "I'll be right back," he said softly into her ear before heading downstairs. He returned again a few minutes later, obviously having checked on things down in the diner.

"How's Jess?" Lorelai asked, her eyes still closed as she lay in the same position he had left her in.

"He's fine. Everything's fine."

He stood for several moments at the edge of the couch, just watching her breath. It had been so long since he had been given the opportunity to simply look at her. Her curly hair was messed from sleeping, the way he liked it most. The shirt she had picked was one of his older ones – gray with red and blue stripes. It was the one he had been wearing the night she proposed to him. He had also it on that evening in the grocery store when he told her they were not right for each other. Despite the dark color, it looked good on her. Of course, to Luke, all his shirts looked good on her.

"I guess I should go home," Lorelai said suddenly. Looking up, he noticed that her eyes were open and that she had caught him staring at her. She was on her feet and going for her own clothing before he realized what was happening.

Luke reacted without thinking, taking a step forward to take her hands in his. "Stay," he requested softly.

She did not respond immediately, instead looking uncertainly from him to the door, then to the floor. While he noted the indecision in her eyes, her body had no such compunctions as her grip tightened on his hands and he heard her let out a hopeless sigh.

"Are you sure?" she asked, looking up to meet his gaze. She was giving him one last chance to pull away, to reject her if he was not truly ready to forgive and forget. He had done it once before, after the Valentine's Day dance, so he could not fault her trepidation. But at the same time, it struck him as inconceivable that such a beautiful, loving woman could stand before him wearing one of his shirts, asking him such an obvious question.

It took all his self control to answer, "Absolutely," before claiming her lips in a fierce kiss. As he did so, Lorelai melted into him, all hesitancy forgotten as she wrapped her arms tightly around his body.

When they broke apart, Luke noticed that she was smiling at him. "I love you," she said impulsively.

"I love you," he told her in return, surprised that it felt as good to say the words as to hear them. They were not just lines out of a movie anymore, the thoughtless, casual endearments created through repeated use. They had real meaning, having been founded on the basis of mutual affection, trust, and now forgiveness.

Without further discussion, he backed away slowly, using their entwined fingers to lead her towards the bed. This time, sleep was the furthest thing from either of their minds.

_The End_

* * *

. 

**A/N: **For anyone that's interested… the movies mentioned and alluded to in this story, not including the chapter titles, are as follows: _Casablanca_ (chapter 3), _Pride & Prejudice_ (chapter 3), _Forrest Gump_ (chapter 4), _Risky Business_ (chapter 6), _Planet of the Apes_ series, (chapters 7, 9, and 12), _You've Got Mail_ (chapter 8), _Forget Paris_ (chapter 11), _The Mirror Has Two Faces_ (chapter 11), _What Women Want_ (chapter 11), _Bridget Jones' Diary_ (chapter 11), _The Mummy_ (chapter 11), _Sleepless in Seattle_ (chapters 11 and 12), _The Lake House_ (chapter 11), and _Playing By Heart_ (chapter 12).

As for the movies in the chapter titles, I highly recommend all of them except maybe for _The Way We Were_, which is not a favorite of mine but I do recognize that it's a classic and has particular importance to L/L (re: break-up, take 1). In particular, I recommend my new favorite _The Lake House_. Liz's mention of it on the show and her comparison to Luke and Lorelai inspired this entire story.


End file.
